


Divine Contract

by Clashing_Harmony



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Angel Family, Angst, Angst and Humor, Big Brother Dean, Character Death, Contracts, First Meetings, First Time, Forced Bonding, Good Big Brother Gabriel, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Innocent Castiel, M/M, Marriage of Convenience, Pre-Slash, Romance, Self-Sacrifice, Sibling Love, Slash, Slow Build, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2016-07-26
Packaged: 2018-03-02 21:17:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 30,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2826398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clashing_Harmony/pseuds/Clashing_Harmony
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the brothers are attacked by demons, leaving Sam fatally wounded, Dean makes a deal with Gabriel to save Sam's life. </p><p>His soul for his brother's life. Dean must form a soul-bond with the naive, confused baby-angel Castiel, Heaven's golden-boy and the key to an ancient prophecy, in return for his brother's life.</p><p>Of course, Dean agrees, willing to sacrifice anything to save his little brother. But while he sees the bond as a mere contract, is that all it will ever be? Will Castiel always remain a burden to his Bonded, or can their relationship be salvaged after all?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

                 

 

 _“Sammy!”_ Dean cried, fighting desperately to get to his brother through the throng of demons surrounding him in all directions. The damned things just refused to die! No matter how many of them he gutted, there were always more, dashing at him with an almost animalistic fervour. Demons weren’t usually like this. They were psychotic, bloodthirsty sons of bitches, yes, but they were also sarcastic and deliberate, taking pleasure in the pain they inflicted, savouring it, bit by bit. These _things_ surrounding him, surrounding them, had the hellish black eyes of demonic possession, but they lacked the finesse or deliberation of most demons Dean had encountered before. They were more like wild animals in a frenzy, attacking in packs, baying for blood, going in straight for the kill.

One of the many demons attacking his brother, overwhelming him with their sheer numbers, had just stabbed him in the back with a jagged, rusty old knife – _fucking coward_! Sam let out an agonized howl of surprise and pain, before crumpling to the ground like so much dead weight. Not satisfied with having overpowered the hunter, the demon continued to twist the knife in deeper, drawing moans of pure agony for Sam, who could no longer gather the energy even to scream.

Dean _roared_ , slicing through the demons like a man possessed, fighting tooth and nail to get to his fallen brother. He could not let this happen; would not allow Sammy to die like this, right before his eyes, writhing in pain, his life snuffed out slowly, torturously by some sadistic spawn of hell.

By the time he reached Sam’s prone body, the numbers of the demonic horde had diminished significantly, most having been killed during Dean’s frenzied dash to reach his brother while the others escaped into the night, or smoked out to find better meat-suits, leaving the injured ones behind to bleed out on the forest floor.

Dispatching the last remaining stragglers with a few efficient strokes of his blade, Dean finally let the knife drop out from between his slack fingers, dropping down to his knees beside Sam, who was lying in a pool of his own blood, his skin clammy and deathly pale from the blood loss.

Sam’s breaths were coming in shallow gasps, as more of the precious liquid seeped out from the wound at his back, soaking the worn fabric of his shirt. He twitched slightly, trying to look at his brother, his body writhing in renewed agony from the movement.

“Don’t move, Sammy,” Dean exclaimed hurriedly, putting a gentle hand under his brother’s head to ease his movements. “I’ll get you outta here before you know it. You’ll be just fine, little bro!” he said, forcing a tight smile onto his face, voice hitching with choked sobs.

“D-Dean,” Sam gasped, his voice pained, beads of sweat appearing on his forehead. He reached out and grasped the other’s outstretched hand with surprising strength, forcing Dean to look him in the eye. “D-Don’t do anything s-stupid. Do you hear me? Y-You have to move on. You have to!” he finished with a final pained gasp, wide eyes gazing at his brother with genuine concern, even through his own pain.

“S _ammy no!_ You’ll be just fine! You’ll see. I’ll-I’ll...” Dean trailed off, running his fingers through his brother’s damp hair, trying in vain to comfort the man whom he couldn’t help but think of as a little boy still, as his little brother, his to protect, his responsibility. Even as the words left his mouth, he knew he couldn’t do it, he couldn’t save Sam. Not this time. Not anymore.

They’d been waylaid in the middle of the forest by this frenzied horde of demons, taken completely by surprise. The Impala had been nearly destroyed. It was a miracle – and the result of decades of ruthless training – that either of them had escaped alive from the attack. _‘Dammit!’_ Dean cursed himself internally. He should have expected this, should have known that son of a bitch Crowley wouldn’t let an attack on his stronghold go unanswered. They should never have let that bastard escape in the first place. They should’ve killed him once and for all when they had the chance, instead of making useless deals and bargains, which never ended up the way they were supposed to anyway. _He_ should’ve killed him.

But instead he had fallen for Crowley’s sweet-talking, his fucking mind games, again and again. Crowley had promised he could bring Dad back, could release him from the pits of Hell in return for their help in defeating Lilith, so that he could take her place at the helm of Hell.

He had been a fool, an utter idiot to put his faith in a demon, of all things! As if that bastard Azazel had not been enough of a lesson. Even dead, the thought of that yellow-eyed piece of shit who had killed their mother made Dean’s blood boil.

Even though Crowley had broken his promise after Lilith’s death (big surprise there), their attack on the Gates of Hell had helped release John Winchester’s soul. Even though he was still dead, at least his soul was now in Heaven, where it belonged.

What it had also done was raze a large chunk of Crowley’s demonic hordes, and throw Hell into chaos. They had almost managed to gut Crowley himself, but the slippery bastard had escaped from between their fingers at the last moment, when Sam and Dean had been distracted by the sight of their father’s soul appearing before them.

And now, of course he was out for their blood! Of course Crowley wanted revenge on the Winchesters for throwing his reign into chaos even before it had properly begun! How could Dean have expected otherwise? How could he not have known what was going to happen? How could he have let this happen to Sam? To the only family he had left on earth? What would Dad say if he knew Dean had let him down again? That he had let some demon scum get to Sammy, his brother, his only responsibility! Without the Impala, there was no way to get Sammy out of this godforsaken forest. And even if he could somehow manage that, the wound was too deep. It would be too late by the time they got to a hospital. Dean knew all this, understood it logically, but even so, in his heart of hearts, he could not bring himself to give up on his little brother, to accept the fact that Sam was as good as dead.

Dean was jerked out from the bitter depths of his own thoughts by the sudden movement before him. Sam was thrashing now, fighting to draw breath, his movements pained and jerky. Even as Dean dove forward to support his brother, to hold him up in his arms, to do _something_ to relieve his suffering – a rasping, gurgling sound escaped Sam’s throat, blood pouring out of his mouth, until finally, with one last painful gasp, Sam’s body stilled. His eyes rolled up, the quick, shallow rise and fall of his breast ceased once and for all and all signs life left his body as if they’d never been.

Dean just sat there, on his knees on the dirty forest floor, the fallen branches and sharp rocks digging into his skin through the fabric of his jeans, leaving scratches and cuts that he barely noticed. His arms were wrapped tightly around his brother’s prone body, holding him up, his deathly stillness mirroring that of the man in his arms, save for the sudden, violent shivers that ran down his spine every now and then. A few tears occasionally trickled down his wide, unseeing eyes, leaving wet tracks along his grime-covered face, before falling off his chin onto the forest floor, unnoticed.

To Dean, it was as if time itself had come to a stop. His muscles were frozen in place, he couldn’t bring his body to move. He felt as though his blood had frozen in his veins. Even drawing breath seemed like a belated afterthought. He supposed this was what it felt like to be in shock, but he couldn’t be sure. He had been too little to understand much when his mother had died, and he’d been injured and unconscious when he lost his father. Sam though, Sammy was all that he had left on this earth, his only family. Protecting him, keeping him safe and by his side had been Dean’s only mission in life, his greatest task, his most important achievement.

And now Sam was gone, and Dean didn’t know what else he had to live for, anymore. What did you live for, when all that you cared for was taken away from you, one by one? What was the point of life when the most important thing in your life had been snatched away, lost forever?

He would’ve made a deal for his brother’s life without a second thought, like he had done once before, if he thought that any crossroads demon would respond to his summons. But this was Crowley’s doing, his demons had killed Sam. That Dean was still alive was bad enough. What demon would risk its life by going against the King of Hell and offering to bring Sam back, in return for Dean’s tattered, broken soul? And he had nothing else to offer for his brother’s life. Besides, the Winchesters were too notorious, after their attack on the Gate of Hell. Even one’s soul wouldn’t be temptation enough to give the other another chance at life, another chance to storm Hell to rescue his brother once again, as they had tried to rescue their father.

 

All these thoughts ran through Dean’s mind even as he sat on the forest floor in a daze, unseeingly looking at the maze of trees in front of him, his brother’s body in his arms. All the logic, all the knowledge and reason in the world couldn’t convince him that Sam was truly gone. That there was really nothing Dean could do to save his baby brother this time. The stubborn, unreasonable hope in the pit of his stomach simply refused to die, refused to accept his brother’s fate. Even now, he expected to see Sam open his eyes, to say his name any moment. He closed his eyes, envisioning his brother alive and well again. Not a dead weight in his arms but healthy and walking, climbing into the Impala beside him, laughing at something Dean had said, his expressive eyes twinkling with humour and mischief.

Tears trickled past Dean’s closed eyelids even as the vision started to fade, but he refused to open his eyes. He couldn’t face the world anymore. Couldn’t face reality, and see his brother’s corpse lying in his arms. Suddenly, the world seemed too much. Everything seemed too much and he squeezed his eyes shut as hard as he could, almost making himself dizzy with the effort, in an illogical but desperate bid to make the world fade away, to make everything disappear and to disappear with it, once and for all, never to wake up again.

“Please. Someone. _Save him_ ,” he whispered hopelessly, his eyes still determinedly shut and his voice choked with tears. “I’ll do anything. ANYTHING! Just please, bring him back...” he prayed desperately to no one in particular, for he didn’t know anyone who would listen.

Had his eyes not been shut so tightly, the fierce, all-consuming light that pierced through his scrunched eyelids would have blinded Dean. As it was, the force of it pushed him back onto his heels, instinctively gathering Sam’s body closer to his chest, even though the latter didn’t need his protection anymore.

Surprised, Dean’s eyes flew open, looking around himself for the source of the sudden illumination. Not because he was afraid, Dean was beyond fear at this point; but because for some strange reason, the tiny ray of hope that had taken up residence at the pit of his stomach and stubbornly refused to leave even when all hope seemed lost, had suddenly blossomed into a full-blown fire inside his chest, warming him from the inside out, seeming to warm even Sam’s cold body with its unrelenting heat and intensity.

The blinding light that he had sensed through his closed eyelids was now gone, leaving a faint, dilute illumination at the distance, like the light of a rather weak lamp, silhouetting two strange figures in the middle of the forest with what appeared to be...wings!


	2. The Angel Gabriel

At the sight of the mysterious strangers, Dean jumped instinctively to his feet, snatching up his fallen knife from the forest floor and taking up a protective stance in front of his brother’s prone body.

“Who the fuck are you?” Dean growled at the shadows, his voice almost feral with rage and frustration. All the sadness and pain he felt at the loss of his brother seemed to have turned into sheer, unadulterated fury at the sight of these unwelcome intruders. 

The shorter of the two, who could’ve been no taller than five foot five, came forward, walking closer with an arrogant panache – his back straight, his head thrown back with an amused smile, somehow managing to look down his rather sharp nose at Dean, despite being significantly shorter than him. Dean could see no wings on him, though. It must’ve been a trick of the light, he thought. 

The short guy’s carefree manner somehow managed to enrage Dean even further, his knowing smile almost like salt on his wounds; and he stepped forward too, gripping the knife a little more tightly.

“Answer me you bastard!” Dean roared once again, readying himself for a fight.

“There there Dean-o,” cooed his companion, extricating what looked like an orange Popsicle from one pocket and popping it into his mouth. “What’s with all the roaring and growling? That’s not very civilized, is it? We’re all gentlemen here, we can work this out in a gentleman-like manner,” he continued in a fake-soothing voice, his manner rife with condescension.

“Oh yeah?” hissed Dean, eyes flashing, his voice several octaves lower than it had been before, and several times more dangerous. “So why don’t you get your boy-toy over there and take your civilized ass back into whatever hole it’d crawled out of?” he demanded harshly.

“Tut-tut Dean-o,” admonished the other man, his hazel eyes dancing with mirth. He seemed to be getting off on Dean’s obvious discomfiture. “Is that any way to talk to the only person in the world who can help you? I don’t think so, m’boy!” 

Dean’s breath caught in his throat, his fingers twitching around the knife they held. He didn’t know what to make of the man before him. How in Hell did the guy find out his name anyway? He was rather small in size, and he didn’t seem to be carrying any obvious weapons. Not that that was saying much. Dean knew more than most how well a weapon could be concealed when concealment was desired. The other guy, who hadn’t moved an inch from his original position, was wearing a huge-ass coat that almost covered his slender frame from head to toe. Any amount of ammunition could be hidden inside it, out of sight.

That said, neither of the two seemed to be rearing for a fight. The little guy didn’t even seem to have noticed the knife in Dean’s hand. If he was a demon, he was either incredibly powerful or incredibly stupid, Dean decided. Not that he cared either way. Sam was gone, and Dean didn’t particularly care whether or not he survived the day. At least, this way he’d go down swingin’.

“The fuck are you talking about?” Dean sneered, leaning slightly forward so as to be able to look his opponent in the eye. “No one can help me now.”

“So says the guy whom we busted out of Hell not so long ago. Ingratitude, that’s what I call it!” the stranger exclaimed, sighing with an air of mock exasperation.

“What?” Dean breathed, for the first time paying more than a cursory attention to the strangers who had intruded upon his mourning. “What did you just say?”

“Pay attention, hot-shot!” admonished the other irritably, sucking on his Popsicle with renewed gusto. “Humans these days, honestly! There used to be RESPECT, back in the day. There used to be FEAR! You saw a couple angels pop up before you, you went down on your knees grovelling for mercy. Those were the days! Nowadays all they do is stand in your face, yapping away like petulant puppies. Sheesh!”

Dean had had enough of this weird guy talking nonsense. His brother was dead, and he wasn’t in the mood for inane chatter. 

“Are you gonna come to the point, or should I just drive this knife through your heart and be done with it?” he demanded, moving the blade in his hand to emphasize the threat.

“Well, you can drive as many knives as you please through whatever part of my anatomy you fancy, not that it’d make a difference to me,” replied the stranger in a bored voice. “But that’d have to wait till we’ve finished our business here.”

“What business?” Dean questioned suspiciously, resuming his protective stance before his brother’s body.

“Why Dean-o, didn’t I just tell you?” the stranger asked in a hurt voice. “We’re here to help you...” and pausing a moment for dramatic effect, “To help you save your brother,” he finished with a flourish, standing back contentedly to watch the effect of his words.

All the fight left Dean’s body as soon as his mind registered the words that had been spoken. His breathing stilled and his grip on the knife slackened. With wide eyes, he stared at the man standing before him, trying to gauge the veracity of his claim. He didn’t dare to hope, but he couldn’t bring himself to completely disregard his words either. He wanted to believe him, goddammit! Wanted to believe that there was still hope, that Sam could still be brought back from the clutches of death. It seemed so unlikely, too good to be true; nobody ever came out of the blue to help the Winchesters. That was their job! But Dean would do anything, anything to get his brother back; and he would willingly give his life even for the slightest chance that Sam might be saved.

“What did you just say?” Dean rasped finally, his voice husky from suppressed tears. He stepped forward cautiously, his stance a lot less threatening than it had been moments ago, though he was still far from relaxed. “Y-you can help Sam? How? What are you? Demons? Deities?”

“Demons!” exclaimed the stranger in a scandalized tone, looking supremely offended. “Did you just call me a demon, you insolent boy?”

“Well, am I wrong?” demanded Dean suspiciously. “Coz I ain’t heard of anything else that can revive the dead. So why don’t you stop playing coy and start spilling? What the hell are you?”

“We’re angels, I’ll have you know,” pronounced the stranger haughtily, his delicate nose held firmly high in the air. “Soldiers of Heaven, agents of God blah blah blah – you get the picture. We’re the ones who stormed Hell and dragged your sorry ass out of perdition. And do we get any gratitude for it? No sir-ee! It’s a thankless job, I tell you,” he finished, sighing melodramatically. 

Dean drew back slightly, gaping at the two men before him in shocked silence. He didn’t know if he was supposed to laugh at the man’s miserable attempt at a joke or knife the bastard where he stood. It never occurred to him to actually believe the stranger, of course. God, angels...they were fairy tales concerned mommies told their kids to help them sleep better at night – like his own mother had once told him, so long ago, that angels were watching over him. They weren’t real, of course. They couldn’t be. Because believing that there was no God was better than believing that He was there, that He could see all the crap that went on down here and that he simply didn’t care. 

“You’re what?” Dean repeated dazedly, on the off-chance that he might have misheard the dude. “Say that again.”

“Umm...are you deaf?” asked the stranger, squinting doubtfully at Dean, as if he were the crazy one in this gathering. “Didn’t I just tell you? We’re Angels! I’m Gabriel, the Messenger of God. That guy over there? That’s baby bro Castiel, the Angel of Thursday and one of Heaven’s best soldiers. And there’re plenty more where we came from,” he assured Dean, nodding sagely up at the cloudy sky above. “There’s a whole Host of us, though most haven’t been down to the dustbowl in quite a while now.”

“Oh yeah?” snorted Dean, looking the other man up and down derisively. “Angels are you? Aren’t you guys supposed to be small and fluffy, with wings and halos and stuff, and sit on people’s shoulders playing harps and giving good advice? Sorry to break this to ya pal, but you don’t look very angel-y to me.” 

“These,” ground out Gabriel irritably through gritted teeth. “Are just vessels. Mortal vessels. Because your puny human brains weren't meant to handle the awesomeness and glory of our true forms, we need to appear to humans in mortal guise, lest your grey cells be deep-fried at the sight of our divine light,” sighing theatrically, he continued. “Read up on your Bible, boy! Angels are the soldiers of Heaven. We’re military,” he explained importantly, sucking on his Popsicle.  
“So you’re wearing some poor guy’s body as a meat-suit, is that it?” Dean demanded, drawing back in revulsion. “Angels or whatever, you’re just demons by another name,” he spat.

“Hold your horses, Dean-o!” Gabriel cautioned, raising a hand; and though his voice was light, the undercurrent of preternatural authority running through it made Dean hold his tongue momentarily. “Don’t go making hasty judgments about things you don’t completely understand. These,” he said, indicating himself and his companion angel, “Are vessels. They are as different from demonic ‘meat-suits’ as can be. These are the bodies of pious souls who prayed for angelic intervention into their lives and beings. It was their greatest desire to host the grace of Angels inside their physical bodies. No Angel can possess a vessel without the host’s explicit permission, freely given, for the use of their body for the fulfillment of the divine will. It is nothing like a demon possessing a hapless human to trifle with.”

“So some miserable excuse for a human being actually begged you to possess him?” Dean asked, too stunned to even muster the energy to properly curse the gullibility of the human race. He and his brother had spent their entire lives trying to prevent people from facing this same fate, fighting and dying for it, and for what? Just so that these idiots could hand themselves over – body and soul – to some supernatural fiends on a platter?

“There are realms of knowledge and understanding in the universe that are so far beyond your comprehension that you could spend your entire life trying to grasp a tiny fraction of it and still fail miserably, little boy,” taunted Gabriel, laughing; that undercurrent of barely contained power vibrating under the surface of his skin even stronger now. “Your way of seeing the world and dealing with it is not the only way, far from it. But thankfully, it isn’t my job to get intricate philosophical ideas past that thick skull of yours! I’m just here to make a simple deal with you, that even your limited intelligence should be able to comprehend easily.”

“Oh yeah? First meat-suits and now deals? Honestly, I can’t begin to imagine why anybody would think you’re anything like a demon!” Dean taunted back, feeling the bittersweet tang of victory at the back of his throat.

His posture stiffening with sudden rage, Gabriel took a threatening step forward. “You’d better show me some respect, you insolent boy! My brethren sacrificed a lot to raise you from perdition,” at this, his eyes flicked momentarily towards Castiel. “And I have the power to throw you right back in, if I have to,” he finished with a low growl.

Every instinct in Dean’s body was screaming at him to step back and away from the advancing predator. But Dean being Dean, he could do nothing but stand his ground stubbornly, even in the face of imminent disaster, he couldn’t bring himself to bow to an opponent. He stared at Gabriel, his eyes steely, not giving an inch, until finally the Angel could no longer hold back his mirth.

“You’re something else, you know that, Dean Winchester?” he said, laughing. “I can see now why Daddy chose you for the job. I didn’t believe it at first. I mean, what could a human possibly have that Angels couldn’t provide? But such stubbornness in the face of absolute and inevitable destruction, that’s a human quality through and through. Stupid, reckless and unpredictable as all Hell! Maybe there is something to you bipedal monkeys after all, painful as it is for my dear brothers to acknowledge it.”

“The hell are you yapping on about?” snapped Dean irritably, utterly confused at Gabriel’s apparently incoherent ramblings.

Dean’s irritated grumbling seemed to bring Gabriel back to himself. “What I’m trying to say, Winchester,” he began, slowly circling Dean as he spoke, “Is that I have an offer for you. If and only if you are interested, of course. As I said, we are not demons, and we do not act without the willingly given consent of humanity. But if you are willing, I can bring your brother back to life, right now.”

Dean’s heart jumped to his throat. From the moment those words had left the Angel’s lips, Dean’s decision was a foregone conclusion. He would give anything for his brother’s life and safety; there could be no question about that. But he was waiting for the other shoe to drop, and forced himself not to reveal his true emotions as he asked Gabriel in a hard voice, “And what do you want in return? Let me guess! My soul, right?”

At Dean’s bitter inquiry, a look of genuine surprise crossed Gabriel’s face for a moment, but it was gone as soon as it had appeared and was quickly replaced by the look of condescending amusement that he had worn since the moment they had met.

“No thanks buddy. I don’t deal in second hand goods,” Gabriel said flippantly, his haughty air back in full force. “The favour I need from you is much simpler, actually.”

“Well then, how about you stop building the suspense and spit it out already?” demanded Dean, his entire body vibrating with tension.

“I can’t,” said Gabriel, almost in a whisper now. “Not unless you agree to accept the deal. If you decline, it would be too much of a risk to reveal the details to you, a mere human. The fate of multiple worlds is riding on this, Winchester. This information cannot be trifled with. If you don’t want to accept the deal, say so now and I will leave immediately. You will never see either of us again. But if you choose to accept the deal and save your brother, you will have to agree to fulfil our request after your brother’s soul has been restored to his body.”

As Gabriel spoke, Dean stared past him blankly, lost in his own thoughts. He could not be bothered to hear all of the Angel’s needlessly elaborate speech. The only words that had registered to him at all were ‘save your brother’ and ‘his soul restored to his body’. Sam could still be saved. There was still hope. He would get his little brother back. To Dean, that was all that mattered. Everything else was irrelevant. Of course Dean would do anything it took to protect Sam. Whatever the price was, it couldn’t be greater than his brother’s life! Once Sam was back, they could get through anything together, as they had always done – the Winchesters against the world.

“I’ll take it,” Dean finally said, in a barely audible whisper, cutting through Gabriel’s steady flow of words. “I’ll take the deal, whatever it is. I don’t care. Just help my brother. Bring Sam back to life, that’s all that matters now. I don’t care what happens next,” he declared brokenly.

“As you wish,” said a soft, gravelly voice from behind Gabriel. Looking up through misty eyes, Dean saw the trench-coat guy – the other Angel – walking towards them. Amidst all that had transpired between him and Gabriel, Dean had almost forgotten about the other one, supposedly named Castiel. But Heaven’s purported Golden Boy was walking towards them now with a purposeful stride, and somehow Dean had the irrational urge to reach out and touch his back, to see if the wings he had glimpsed before had indeed been just a trick of the light.

Stomping down brutally on that particular thought, and shaking his head to clear it of the sudden dizziness that was probably the result of a long and exhausting day without any rest, Dean looked up finally at the two strangers and said with a note of resounding certainty:

“I’ll do whatever it takes to save my brother.”


	3. Civil War

“Atta boy!” exclaimed Gabriel, seemingly having regained his exuberant spirits after the sudden bout of seriousness. “In that case, let’s get on with business, shall we? There’s no point in keeping poor Sammy waiting any longer,” he said, walking purposefully towards Sam’s prone body, where it lay on the mossy floor.

“Don’t call him that!” Dean growled, walking with long strides to keep up with the surprisingly agile Angel. He felt overcome by a sudden rush of unexpected protectiveness toward his temporarily helpless little brother.

“Okay okay, hot-shot,” smirked Gabriel, raising both hands in a gesture of mock-surrender. “Don’t get your panties in a twist or anything.”

Dean fumed internally but kept himself from voicing the retort that sprang automatically to his lips, as they finally came up beside Sam’s body. The short Angel might’ve been a dick but at the moment he held Sam’s life in his hands, quite literally, and Dean couldn’t afford to provoke him into changing his mind. His verbal retribution could wait until Sam was alive and breathing once again.

As they stopped walking, Gabriel gestured to his companion in the trench-coat. “Wanna do the honours, little brother?”

“As you wish,” replied the Angel Castiel taking a step forward, in the same soft, gravelly tone he had used before, which somehow inspired more confidence in Dean than all of Gabriel’s imposing bluster combined. There seemed to be a quiet sort of reliability about Castiel that made it impossible for Dean to distrust the scrawny, dishevelled guy with a fashion-sense decades out of date.

“C-can you really do it? Can you really save him?” asked Dean, a little fearfully, now that the time for action had finally arrived. He was almost afraid to hope. He didn’t think he would survive it, if after coming so close to getting his brother back, he were to lose him all over again.

“Don’t you worry Dean-o!” assured Gabriel with a sudden, hearty clap to his back that made Dean almost jump out of his own skin in surprise. “Castiel here is one of the best Healers in Heaven, besides being a soldier. He’ll bring your brother back in a jiffy,” he said, snapping his fingers in demonstration.

Dean sighed. Not that he could blame anyone; it had been his mistake to ask Gabriel a question. Almost of their own accord, his eyes wandered over to Castiel, where the other Angel was hovering over his little brother.

As he watched, Castiel went down on one knee, kneeling noiselessly beside Sam. He was so quiet in all his movements, as though he were almost weightless, ethereal – his physical body just an illusion. Slowly, he held out both his hands, palms down, over Sam’s chest, and a soft glow emanated from his outstretched palms, illuminating Sam’s deathly white features. Even as they watched, the preternatural light brightened slowly until it had become almost blinding in its intensity, and Dean had to shield his eyes to keep them from being burned out by the divine glow.

“Sam! What’s happening?” Dean cried, moving blindly towards his brother, unable to stand by as the mysterious light shrouded his body from view.

“Don’t!” warned Gabriel, holding out an arm to block Dean’s way, strong and immovable as a steel barricade.

“Let me go!” roared Dean, pushing against his captor with all his might. “That’s my brother you bastard! What’s he doing to him?”

“Saving him,” answered Gabriel authoritatively. Then, in a softer, kinder tone, he added, “Have faith”.

For some reason, those words froze Dean, making him stop struggling; and breathing heavily he watched transfixed as the fierce light covering Sam dimmed slowly, revealing him lying motionless and still on the floor as Castiel kneeled over him, just as they had been moments ago.

“What happened? What the fuck did you do to him?” Dean demanded, rushing over blindly to Sam’s side and falling to his knees beside his brother, opposite Castiel. “Did it work?” he asked in almost a whisper, as if afraid to say the words out loud.

“Watch,” said Gabriel softly, coming up behind Dean. 

As three pairs of eyes watched him, Sam’s chest began to rise and fall minutely with shallow breaths. His eyelids flickered and a soft, almost inaudible moan escaped his lips – prompting Dean to lean forward instinctively, whispering soothing words into Sam’s ears.

Eventually, Sam’s eyes opened fully, and the recently revived Winchester gazed around dazedly, his face a mask of utter confusion.

“Where–” he began, trying to lift himself off the ground, but before he could finish his question he was unceremoniously enveloped by a pair of very strong arms, followed by a very dusty brother. “Dean!” he exclaimed, first in surprise, but then again in relief – at finally being back at his brother’s side, exactly where he belonged. The last time he saw his brother he had not been sure he would survive. Hell, he’d not been sure Dean would survive, surrounded as they’d both been by wild demons. Speaking of which–

“Sam!” Dean’s voice distracted him, the word coming out in a choked sob, as if wrenched out of his brother’s throat by force. “Sam, thank God! You’re okay. You’re back!”

“Yeah Dean I’m – wait what?” Sam demanded, coming up short at Dean’s words. “I’m...back? Back from where? Where had I gone?”

“I-I meant you’re okay, man, ya know. I mean those demons had gotten you pretty good there–” Dean began with the feeble attempt at a joke, desperately looking for a way out.

“Put your foot in your mouth again there, didn’t you Dean-o?” Gabriel asked, grinning, even as Castiel quietly averted his eyes to give the brothers some privacy.

As soon as his eyes landed on the two strangers, Sam was up in a flash, hands searching subconsciously for a weapon even as he spoke. “Dean, what the hell did you do? Who are these people? Dean, for God’s sake tell me you didn’t make another deal,” he asked urgently, almost pleading.

“Sammy, listen to me. It isn’t like that, I can explain,” began Dean, his voice tinged with equal urgency, rising to his feet after Sam and coming to stand between him and the Angels.

“Oh yeah?” asked Sam, eyes fixed on the strangers, readying himself for a fight, his hands having finally found his discarded knife. “Explain what, huh? Explain how you sold your soul for me? AGAIN?!! Explain how I’m gonna have to watch you being hunted down and torn apart by hellhounds; how I’m gonna have to live with your blood on my hands, AGAIN? Explain that?” Sam was screaming now, his body shaking with suppressed rage and terror at the prospect of losing his brother. “Well all of that can wait until I’ve knifed these bastards back to Hell, where they belong!”

“Sam no!” Dean exclaimed, throwing himself securely between the Angels and his brother, who seemed ready to lunge at any moment. “I’m telling you, it’s not like that! It’s not what you think, Sammy. They’re not demons.”

“Then what the hell are they, huh? What did you make a deal with this time? What’s worse than demons?” Sam demanded fiercely. Then, deflating as quickly as he had flown into a killing rage, he whispered in a defeated tone, “Why couldn’t you just let me die, Dean?”

“Sammy! Don’t you ever say that, ya hear me?” Dean growled, gripping his brother by the shoulders. “We’re in this together, man! You and me, just like we always have been. I’m never leaving you behind, no matter what!”

“Touching as it is, all this brotherly passion, the second part of our deal is still pending, remember Dean-o?” interrupted Gabriel, between fits of laughter, tears running down his cheeks. “Oh man! You two could have your own soap, you know that?” he giggled.

“Why you filthy demon–” Sam roared, flying at Gabriel, knife in hand.

Even as Dean reached out to stop his brother, with a flick of Gabriel’s finger Sam’s body froze mid-air, his arm pulled back with the knife, ready to strike.

“I’m an Angel, I’ll have you know,” Gabriel said primly, plucking the knife nimbly out of Sam’s frozen hand. “And good boys don’t play with such dangerous things,” he continued, patronizingly patting Sam’s head – unfreezing him with the touch.

“What’ve you done to my brother, you sneaky bastard?” Dean demanded, advancing towards Gabriel threateningly, even as Sam regained movement in his body, looking around himself confusedly once again.  
“–the fuck just happened?” he muttered, looking down at himself with a bewildered frown. “What the hell kind of demons are you?”

“For the last bloody time – We. Are. Not. Demons,” repeated Gabriel once again through gritted teeth, obviously annoyed. “We’re Angels! And as such, can smite both your puny mortal asses to the deepest pits of Hell if you don’t show us some bloody respect. NOW!”

“Hey, okay man! We get it yeah? Chill,” Dean muttered, both hands raised and moving imperceptibly away from the raging Angel, pulling his brother back with him. 

“Angels?” Sam repeated confused, looking from Gabriel to Castiel with an air of bewildered curiosity. “As in, the Biblical kind? The soldiers of God? Heavenly Host type Angels?” 

“Finally! Someone who’s actually read the bloody Instruction Manual Daddy provided to explain the Divine shit-fest to your puny brains!” Gabriel said with what seemed like genuine relief. “Yep, that’s exactly the kind we are,” he finished with a mock bow.

“S-so I was saved by Angels?” Sam exclaimed, looking at his brother with eyes full of wonder.

“Yeah well, no need to get all gooey over it. They ain’t no better than the average run-off-the-mill Hell-spawn,” Dean spat scornfully.

“Dean!” Sam squeaked, scandalised – looking cautiously from Gabriel to Castiel for any sign of divine wrath.

“Don’t worry about it,” Gabriel told Sam with a longsuffering sigh. “Your brother has the manners of an ill-trained ape. In that regard he is beyond help.”

“Says the guy making secret supernatural deals in the dead of the night in a forest in the middle of nowhere,” countered Dean sarcastically. “Your gentleman-like manners astound me!”

“And that reminds me,” interrupted Gabriel, cutting off the rest of Dean’s tirade. “We have business to take care of, people. Being an Angel is hectic business, y’know. I haven’t got all day.”

“Dean, I don’t get it. What’s going on? What business is he talking about? What did you do?” Sam pleaded, an edge of desperation slipping into his voice as he tried to figure out the situation.

“Alrighty then, what do you want?” asked Dean stiffly, without answering Sam or even looking in his direction. His eyes met Gabriel’s directly, showing courage he did not feel. Suddenly, his palms felt sweaty and his breathing quickened. A heavy weight seemed to have settled somewhere in his chest. It wasn’t that he was regretting his decision. If need be, he would make this same deal a thousand times over to keep Sam safe, no matter what the consequences. But it was finally time to keep his end of the bargain, and Dean had no idea what Gabriel had in mind. Failure wasn’t an option, but he wasn’t sure he was capable of fulfilling an Angel’s expectations. What did an Angel want with a guy like him, anyway?

“Your soul,” answered Gabriel promptly.

“What?” demanded Sam, stepping in front of his brother protectively, his posture defensive. He would die before watching his brother sell his soul for him once again. “I thought you said you weren’t Demons!”

“Oh dear Daddy! Will you hear me out?” asked the Angel plaintively. “I can see why those poor Demons wanted to do you two in once and for all. You try the sweetest of tempers,” he moaned.

“What, like yours?” Dean smirked, but quieted quickly at Gabriel’s wrathful glare.

“Zip it, Winchester,” the Angel commanded. “As I was saying, I need you to form a soul-bond with my little bro Castiel, here” he said, gesturing at the other Angel, who remained as impassive as ever.

“Eh? What?” questioned Dean, with an air of such utter and complete confusion that Gabriel took pity on him.

“Well, see, it’s like this. Daddy’s been MIA for quite a while now, right around the time Jesus got himself nailed up on a Cross. Guess the shock was too much for him. Well anywho, crux of the matter is, before He left, He left some instructions for the kids back home. No fightin’, no drinkin’, no smitin’; you know how parents are. No fun, that’s how.

“And surprise surprise. Turns out, some of the kids didn’t like the rules all that much. Daddy’s gone, He ain’t coming back no more – so say all the rumours in the Gardens of Paradise. Some of the kids are growing restless. They wanna play by their own rules now. Re-design Heaven, reclaim the earth and get rid of all those pesky humans. Throw a big fat party to impress all the cool kids, you get the picture. Some of them want to free li’l bro Lucifer now, to realise his grand vision of annihilating the human race. Long story short – there’s Civil War in Heaven, Dean-o! And the fate of the entire world, of the universe as you know it, depends on which side wins.”

For a moment, both the Winchesters were dumbstruck, too shocked by the story to say anything. Until now, the whole Angel thing had seemed like some kind of an elaborate dream. Even though he had seen their wings, Dean had never actually grasped the magnitude of what he was getting into, preoccupied as he had been with his brother’s wellbeing. Now though, there was no getting away from it. He had bitten off a Hell of a lot more than he could ever hope to chew! 

Soon however, Dean regained his voice, and began with visible bravado, “Oh yeah? And which side are you on?”

“Us? Oh we’re the good kids. Perfectly obedient and all that shit. Although I hear it’s a lot more fun on the other side. But Mikey’s in a mighty-smitey mood right now, and personally, I’d rather not be blown to bits anytime soon.”

“’Mikey’ as in...the Archangel Michael?” asked Sam hesitantly.

“Yep. Got it in one, kiddo!” said Gabriel appreciatively. “Besides, I kinda like you mud-monkeys! ‘Least you’re amusing, which is more than I can say for all my grumpy bros back home,” he sighed.

“Even if everything you’ve just said is true, which for the record, I’m very far from believing right now,” began Dean. “Where the Hell do we fit into the picture? As you keep saying, we’re just puny mortals. How the effin’ Hell do you expect us to help in an Angelic civil war?”

“Oh Dean-o! Such touching humility!” Gabriel sighed dramatically. “As it happens, puny humans you might be, but you’re not just any puny human. You’re special!”

“Special how?” demanded Sam, seriously worried now. He didn’t completely understand what was going on yet, but he did know that he didn’t like any of it.

“Well you see, Castiel here is the youngest Angel in Heaven. He was created after dear brother Lucy fell from grace, the only Angel to have been created after the Fall. And because Daddy simply couldn’t resist the urge to screw us all one last time, Castiel’s grace is the key to Lucifer’s cage; he’s the only Angel who can set Lucifer free.”

At Gabriel’s words, Dean’s eyes snapped over to Castiel. He had always felt that there was something different about the other Angel. He seemed somehow purer than Gabriel, more innocent, more curious and less judgemental about everything he saw around him. Dean could never have imagined the actual reason for that feeling, however. It left him completely flabbergasted.

This time, Sam found his tongue before Dean. “Yeah, but all of that doesn’t explain why Dean and I need to be involved in this.”

“It will if you let me finish, for a change,” snapped the older Angel. “As you can imagine, the faction of Angels that want Lucifer freed are after Castiel’s grace, and that is the one thing they cannot be allowed to have. If Lucifer is freed, the human race is as good as extinct. Even if Mikey manages to beat Lucy and shove him back into the cage, the Earth will not be able to sustain the damage caused by a direct showdown between the two most powerful beings in Creation. This planet, hell, maybe the solar system will be ancient history before you can say goose,” he explained, rather enthusiastically, considering the topic.

“Well, so why don’t you hide him somewhere safe then, until this whole thing blows over and we can all go back to our lives?” asked Dean.

“Hide him where? What nook or cranny of the universe is beyond the reach of half the Heavenly Host when they are determined to find their target? This constant hide-and-seek has depleted our numbers drastically; and surprising as it may seem to you, I don’t exactly enjoy killing my brothers, even if they are misguided idiots,” Gabriel sighed, a tinge of genuine sorrow colouring his voice for the first time. 

“So what’s the alternative?” asked Sam, trying but failing to think of any viable solution to the problem. How did you hide something from a bunch of super-powered beings who could go anywhere, do anything? It seemed nigh-impossible.

“There was a prophecy,” began Gabriel, taking a deep breath. He seemed tired, suddenly; much older than his physical age. “The soul that hath been tried by Hell-fire shall protect that which Divinity doth desire.”

“A soul that’s been tried by Hell-fire...” murmured Sam, comprehension slowly dawning on his face.

“You got it kiddo!” said Gabriel. “No prizes for guessing who’s the only living soul on Earth who’s been to Hell and back, literally; and is still alive and kicking. So you see, Dean Winchester, the fate of both Heaven and Earth rests on your shoulders. The only way to prevent the rebelling Angels from getting hold of Castiel and freeing Lucifer is for you to bind your soul with his grace. That way, he will be beyond the reach of the Angels. Even if they found him, his grace being attached to your soul, they wouldn’t be able to use it for their purpose. You see? Surely that’s a simple enough concept even for your tiny brain to grasp without much trouble.”

“But why me?” Dean demanded stubbornly. “Why does it have to be me? Surely you can do this same trick with almost any human on earth. Hell, I daresay you could find enough idiots on this planet who’d be happy to be soul-bound with a feathery-assed Angel. And since I’m obviously not one of them, why not just let me go and find some church-going type for your job, yeah?”

“Are you really this stupid? Can it be; or is this just some elaborate facade to annoy me to death?” asked Gabriel in exasperation. “Hell, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you’re one of the Rebels in disguise. It’s just that none of my dim-witted bros are smart enough to come up with something like this!

“An Angel’s grace is powerful. Intense. Ordinary souls, being bound to an Angel’s grace, would destroy themselves even before the process could be completed. Human souls were not designed to withstand that kind of pure, unfiltered energy. Usually, it’d just be too much.

“But as the prophecy says, your soul has been tried by Hell-fire. You’ve gone to Hell and come back, relatively unscathed. If there is one soul on Earth that could survive being bound to an Angel’s grace, Dean Winchester, it’s yours,” he declared. “So, will you keep your end of the bargain, or not?”  
“Well, do I have a choice?” asked Dean resignedly, even as Sam moved closer to his brother, protectively. But even he couldn't argue that they leave the world to be destroyed when there was a chance they could help save it.

“Not unless you want Sammy here to bid farewell to the mortal realms, you don’t” answered Gabriel with a casual shrug, knowing Dean’s answer even before it had left his lips.


	4. The Bond To Be

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry for the delay, and also for the relatively short length of this chapter. In my defence, I got waylaid in my writing, first by exams and then by a completely unexpected bout of pneumonia. Now that my life is back on track, however, I will try to be more regular with my updates. At least until the next exam rolls around to wreck havoc on my schedule.
> 
> Hope you enjoy it! :)

“What exactly is a soul-bond, anyway?” asked Sam curiously, as the four of them walked farther into the forest to avoid any prying eyes while performing the bonding ceremony, as far away from civilization as they could possibly get.

“Oh, it’s just the Angelic version of a human marriage, I suppose,” Gabriel began. “Just a lot more...well, binding. It’s not usually called a soul-bond, as Angels don’t have souls. But it’s kind of the same concept. Your beings become intrinsically bound to each other. You–”

His words were abruptly cut short by Dean coming to a sudden halt in front of the duo. For a minute, he stood stock still, not a muscle moving in his body. If it hadn't been for the periodic rise and fall of his breaths, he might as well have been a perfect statue, rooted to the spot as if he were literally unable to move.

“What did you just say?” Dean demanded, his voice lowered dangerously, turning around sharply to look Gabriel straight in the eye.

“Oh I’ve been saying a lot of things since we met, Dean-o. What exactly do you take an exception to?” quipped Gabriel, smirking.

Dean growled, and Sam hurriedly stepped between his brother and the Angel, wanting to prevent a confrontation which would most likely end with his brother being blown to bits.

“I did not sign up for this you bastard,” snapped Dean, his body tense and ready for a fight.

“No?” asked Gabriel, laughing. “You were ready to sell you soul to save Gigantor over there, but its marriage that finally gets your goat, huh? I’d of thought soul-in-Hell beats marriage on the list of ‘things-to-run-away-from-really-fast’ any day of the week!”

“Dean,” Sam hissed, guilt gnawing at his chest at the thought of his brother sacrificing his life for him once again. “How could you?”

“You stay out of this, Sammy,” Dean ordered angrily, turning to his brother. “And you,” he snarled, looking at Gabriel once again. “You never said this had anything to do with marriage!”

“Oh but I did, Dean-o. I said that in return for your brother’s life, you’d have to do me a favour. Well, this is the favour I need you to do. Chop chop now, we haven’t got all day, ya know!”

“Marriage isn’t a joke, you son of a bitch!” Dean snarled, glaring furiously at the smirking Angel. The thought of marriage had brought back to his mind long forgotten memories of a childhood that now seemed little more than a dream. Memories of their parents, of the bond they had shared, of their unconditional love for each other. To Dean, that had always been the definition of a marriage; the reason he had never believed, never allowed himself to hope, that he could have anything like it. People like him simply weren’t meant to have that kind of bliss, that kind of happiness. Marriage was about love, about the unconditional trust and the faith in each other that their parents had once shared. How could he be expected to put that kind of faith, that trust in an utter stranger? 

“I don’t know what you bloody Angels think you’re doing, but marriage isn’t something you do on a whim ‘coz you’re having a friggin’ family fallout!”

“Oh? And you’d know all about it, wouldn’t you, Dean-o? Shagging every willing body within driving distance sure gives one perspective on the sanctity of marriage, doesn’t it?” taunted Gabriel derisively.

A low, feral growl escaped Dean’s throat, his eyes blazing with fury; but before he could lunge at the Angel, Sam was between them both, standing with his hands outstretched in both directions. 

“Alright, that’s enough!” he snapped, glaring daggers at both the Angel and his brother, who were still fuming at one another. “Can we just...act like adults for a little bit?”

“Tell him that,” both Dean and Gabriel snapped at the same time. Sam sighed.

“Ok, that’s enough. Umm...” he began hesitantly, turning nervously to Gabriel, obviously realising too late that he had just been snapping at an Archangel. “Can I - uh - ask you a question?”

“Sure kiddo. What is it?” asked Gabriel indulgently, sucking happily on his popsicle, having apparently forgotten all about their recent fight.

“You said Dean and – um – Castiel were to be married? But – uh – I mean, how is that–”

“Is there a point in the near future where you get to the point?” asked Gabriel mildly, still sucking on his sweet, ignoring Sam’s furious blush at the obvious insult.

“What I mean to say is,” began Sam once more, steeling himself for the inevitable awkwardness of the question. “When you say they need to be married, do you – I mean – they’re both men. Don’t get me wrong, but isn’t the Church supposed to be against that sort of thing?”

For a moment, that cocky arrogance left the Angel’s face, leaving only a look of slight bafflement. “Is it? Well, what of it? How am I supposed to know what your Church is or isn’t against? And what have their physical forms got to do with anything?”

“What?” asked Sam, equally confused. “I mean, isn’t the Church supposed to preach the word of God?”

Gabriel laughed, but Sam noticed that there was more bitterness than humour in the sound. “The word of God?” he repeated, with another mirthless little chuckle. “The only ‘words’ Daddy said before hauling ass out of the Gardens of Eden were ‘don’t smite the humans’. So unless your Church has Him on speed-dial, whatever ‘words’ they’ve been preaching have nothing to do with Daddy dearest. He wasn’t exactly a word-y kinda guy even when he was here, which was a very long time ago. Only a very few of the Angels have ever spoken to Him directly.”  
“I...see,” said Sam faintly, not seeing anything much, but reeling under all this new information. “So, it really doesn’t matter to God that they are both men?”

“I don’t think anything much matters to Him these days, my boy,” said Gabriel with just a hint of sadness in his voice. “But as far as their biological genders are concerned, I don’t see how that has anything to do with anything. As the name suggests, it is their souls that are being bonded. Souls don’t have a gender one way or the other. And Castiel, being an Angel, doesn’t have a gender, period. The gender of the vessel he is wearing is inconsequential to him, like the colour of your clothes. It doesn’t change who you are,” he explained with surprising patience.

“But I am not even gay!” moaned Dean, stealing a quick glance at Castiel, who was walking quietly by Gabriel’s side, before forcing himself to look away once more. This will not do.

“Difficult as it may be for you to imagine, Dean-o, there is something more profound to the bonding of two souls than mere physical lust. It is a spiritual bond, the deepest kind of connection to another being that can possibly be achieved. The physical should be the least of your concerns right now.”

“So – um – you mean we don’t have to–to do it?” asked Dean with uncharacteristic hesitance, looking resolutely at his mud-covered boots.

“If by that scandalised ‘it’ you mean sex,” Gabriel quipped, his condescending amusement returning full force. “Then no, you don’t. I should have known that would be the first thing your mind jumps to. My poor innocent little brother,” he sighed dramatically. “But no, as I said, you’d have much to adjust to after the ceremony is done. The physical is the least of your worries right now. Consummation of the marriage would make it more secure, less vulnerable. But it’s not essential. At least not at the moment.”

“Eh? What’s that supposed to mean?” demanded Dean, his attention snapping back to the shorter Angel.

“You’ll know when you need to know,” said Gabriel, coming to a halt near a small clearing deep inside the forest. “I think this is far enough, don’t you?”

Gabriel lifted his hand and flicked his fingers slightly, like dusting an invisible spec from the air, and several intricate patterns promptly dug themselves into the ground of the clearing as the Winchesters looked on in surprise.

The first to recover from the spectacle, Sam asked (in a slightly more reverent voice), “But then, what does all of this mean? I mean, I know you said it’s more than just a physical bond. More spiritual, more profound. But practically, what does a soul-bond entail for the participants?” he questioned rather studiously, going into his research mode even as Dean sighed inwardly at his brother’s all-encompassing nerdiness. 

“Practically, it means that for the first few days after the bond, they will need to be in each other’s company near constantly. However the need for physical proximity will wane with time, to the point that within a couple of weeks physical distance would make no difference at all. What will not wane, however, is a near-constant awareness of each other’s location and well being. No matter how far apart they might be, partners of a soul-bond will always know exactly where the other is. If one is injured, the other will feel it, like a distant echo of remembered pain. The same goes for any strong emotions or sensations, like receiving the blurred after-image of a strong feeling. Not enough to cause any actual discomfort, but enough that the two are constantly aware of one another, both in pleasure and in pain.”

“Poetic!” Dean scoffed sarcastically, feeling distinctly uncomfortable at the thought of sharing that close a connection with a complete stranger. Not that he would ever acknowledge it, of course. The only thing worse than binding himself to a strange Angel for God only knew how long would be to show fear in front of that dickhead Gabriel. Dean would happily jump off a cliff before he did that.

“Not that I’d expect an ape like you to appreciate it,” Gabriel retorted distractedly, his attention elsewhere as he put the finishing touches to the numerous intricate patterns that had etched themselves onto the muddy ground. “It’s time to begin, bozo!” he announced happily with a final flick of his finger, clapping Dean on the shoulder hard enough to pitch him forward and into the central circle of the design, which promptly caught fire all around him.


	5. Divine Union

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the next installment. Please let me know if there are any errors, grammatical or otherwise. Thank you.

Dean experienced the next few moments like a particularly vivid dream. He was surrounded by a blazing fire on all sides, the red-orange flames high enough to block out his view of his brother and that sarcastic son-of-a-bitch Angel who had gotten him into this predicament in the first place. Yet, despite the flames blazing all around him, there was no smoke choking the breath out of him; no intolerable heat scorching his skin. If anything, it just left him with an ethereal feeling of warmth, a gentle peace creeping slowly through his bones, making his body relax almost against his will.

 

He was dragged out of his stupor moments later, however, by the sight of the flames in front of him shifting and changing, dancing around in an odd manner. Years of hunter training making him pull himself out of his disoriented state, Dean immediately reached towards his belt – only to find his gun missing, along with his knife. His heart beating rapidly, Dean held his breath and waited for the imminent attack, every muscle in his body taut with tension.

 

Dean was not sure exactly what he had been expecting, his mind too panicked by this unexpected situation to work out the finer details of his plan. He was certain, however, that what stepped out of the blazing flames was not something he had ever expected to see in his life.

 

Castiel’s frame was still slightly shorter than his, but as he stepped casually out of the flames – as if walking through a heavy curtain – his presence seemed to surround Dean, overwhelming the small space in which they were confined by the fire. Once again, surrounded by the dancing light of the flames, Dean thought he could see the shadows of wings flaring out behind the Angel – their width, from tip to tip, spanning the radius of the fiery circle they were entrapped in. He couldn’t be sure if all that his eyes saw was real, or merely a trick of the light, but the flames seemed to have cast a strange glow around Castiel’s face, making it look as though it were surrounded by a halo, the light reflecting off his eyes and making them shine preternaturally blue.

 

As Dean stood unmoving, entranced by the otherworldly appearance of his companion, Castiel stepped forward, moving towards him. When they were finally mere inches from each other, the Angel lifted a hand slowly towards Dean, pressing two fingers lightly to his forehead. Somewhere at the back of his mind, Dean knew that he should be alarmed, should be resisting the alien touch, should at least make some token protest at the presumptuousness of the Angel in touching him without permission. For some reason, though, Dean couldn’t quite bring himself to do any of those things. Something deep within him, some intrinsic and indefinable knowledge, told him that Castiel’s touch wasn’t malevolent, wouldn’t hurt or injure him. His striking blue eyes, while piercing and otherworldly in their luminescence, held no trace of malice or ill-will; only vast depths of knowledge and wisdom intermingled with equal amounts of innocent wonder and curiosity, that in any other being would have seemed to contradict each other, but co-existed with perfect harmony in the sapphire depths of the Angel’s eyes.

 

The Angel took a step closer, until they were almost nose to nose, his fingers still lightly brushing Dean’s forehead. The flames around them roared to life with renewed vigour, rising higher still, seeming to almost kiss the clouds overhead. The sudden increase in light made Dean instinctively close his eyes, even as his mind was flooded with a sudden barrage of sounds and images he had never experienced before, yet that seemed strangely familiar, like revisiting an old dream.

 

_Fire, pain, unbearable scorching heat accompanied by malicious laughter and cruel, gluttonous black eyes. Blood flowing from his carved skin, throat hoarse with screaming until no sound would come out. And then, sudden, blinding light; an after-image of wings closing in around him, shielding him from the fire and torment like a soft, downy yet impenetrable shield. Warmth and comfort for the first time in what felt like centuries; protection and safety – things he had almost forgotten existed, certainly never thought he would feel again._

Dean jerked awake from his reverie, only to see that the fire had died down to its former height and that the Angel was slowly removing his hand from Dean’s face, fingers still lingering in the air as if the loss of contact irked them. Dean didn’t know if what he had just seen and felt had been dream or memory; certainly it had felt too vivid to be a mere illusion of his mind. He could still taste sulphur at the back of his throat and the foul stench of burnt flesh lingered in his memory like a physical sensation. Why Castiel’s touch had awakened those memories in him he did not know. What he did know, however, was that the Angel felt somehow simultaneously alien and familiar, too close and very far, completely accessible yet absolutely remote. His touch felt like coming home as well as being ripped away from reality. It confused the Hell out of Dean – and considering he had spent over forty years down there, that was saying something!

 

As Dean stood silently, lost in his own thoughts, Castiel took a small step back from his companion and held one hand out between them, palm outstretched. Dean looked down at it in confusion, wondering what it was that he was expected to do now, when out of the blue a long, thin, silver knife appeared on Castiel’s palm, its blade glinting in the firelight.

 

Dean’s breath caught at his throat; but whether it was out of fear at the sharpness of the knife or with admiration for the simple yet lethal elegance of the weapon before him, he did not know. The knife was, indeed, a thing of beauty, striking in all its sterling simplicity. It was unlike any weapon Dean had ever seen before. Intricate, beautiful symbols he assumed to be Enochian were carved along the side of its long, slender handle, though what they said Dean couldn’t have guessed. It looked pristine, untouched by the strife and conflict for which it had been forged, pure as its wielder. Dean wondered idly if the blade had ever tasted blood, and found himself wishing – quite unconsciously, without even knowing why he wished it – that it hadn’t. He was not unaware of the ridiculousness of such feelings of protectiveness towards a millennia-old super-powerful agent of God, but he couldn’t seem to help himself.

 

As he watched, Castiel gripped the knife lightly between his fingers, wielding it with an elegance born of long practice. Once again, Dean found himself vacillating between wariness and fascination as he watched the Angel prepare to use his weapon – for what purpose, he had no idea. Notwithstanding his ignorance of the situation, the Hunter found himself quite incapable of true fear where this Angel was concerned; the memory of warm, strong wings wrapping securely around him, shielding him from the soul-shattering torments of damnation, barricaded all terror from his mind, replacing it with an unbidden feeling of warmth and safety.

 

Holding the knife in his right hand, Castiel held out his left, palm up. Slowly, he raised the blade until it settled gently against his outstretched palm, before making a clean gash across the unblemished skin of his hand. The sight of crimson blood welling up against the pale surface startled Dean out of his thoughts, but before he could protest, a few drops of Castiel’s blood fell onto the strange patterns etched on the ground. Immediately, the tiny drops of blood seemed to spread throughout the circle, turning all the patterns and symbols on the ground into a vivid red. Dean’s body stiffened at the sight, eyes widening slightly, but even as he watched he could see Castiel’s skin knitting itself back together, until nothing remained of the gash but a faint pink scar across the palm of the Angel’s hand.

 

In all his amazement, Dean had failed to notice that Castiel was looking straight into his eyes while he gazed at the newly crimson markings in undisguised wonder. He felt himself blush at the intense scrutiny, looking away hastily and asking in a gruff voice – “What now?”

 

“Give me your hand, Dean,” Castiel instructed, holding out his own, his voice mild, yet firm.

 

Hearing his name uttered for the first time in Castiel’s resonant voice startled Dean, making him shift awkwardly on his feet. Gabriel’s insulting nicknames and irreverent mutations of his given name, he knew how to deal with – giving back as good as he got and throwing insults at the slightest provocation. However, there was no mockery in Castiel’s tone as he uttered Dean’s name, but neither was there the familiarity and comfort that Sam’s voice held when saying his brother’s name. It was a strange equation, a middle ground between love and indifference that Dean wasn’t familiar with at all, and wasn’t sure he liked.

 

Nonetheless, he figured there was little point in dragging this thing any longer than was strictly necessary, and obediently extended his hand towards his companion. Castiel caught Dean’s hand in his, holding it, palm up, over his own. He then raised his blade once more and cut a gash through the centre of Dean’s palm similar to his own, tilting both their hands to add a drop of Dean’s blood where his own had already fallen.

 

The moment the droplet of blood made contact with the ground, all the markings etched there by Gabriel’s magic lit up with a fierce light, as if several halogen lamps had been switched on underneath them. Dean’s breath hitched as he instinctively covered his eyes with his free hand, but not before seeing Castiel’s eyes flash a brilliant blue, as if lit up by reflected light.

When Dean next opened his eyes, the supernatural fire surrounding them was gone, and the light from the markings had dimmed until he could make out the individual designs and patterns with little effort.

 

“ _Dean!_ ” he heard his brother’s voice cry out from a distance, before Sam had rushed in to join the duo at the centre of the circle, coming to a halt beside the elder Winchester.

 

Gabriel, following him at a more leisurely pace, eventually took up position beside his own brother, lips already quirking into a smirk.

 

“Dean, are you alright?” Sam demanded worriedly, looking his brother up and down as if to check for any injuries. “You aren’t hurt are you?”

 

“I’m fine Sammy,” Dean replied gruffly; feeling more gratified by his little brother’s concern than he cared to admit.

 

“Well, I’m so glad to see you kids are getting along,” remarked Gabriel, smirking, with a pointed look at their still joined hands.

 

Dean, who had forgotten all about the blood-rituals amidst all the confusion, felt himself blush to the roots of his hair before snatching his hand back roughly, growling menacingly at Gabriel. If he felt a strange chill creep up his spine at the loss of contact with the younger Angel, that was just because he was getting delirious from the blood loss – no one need know anything about it.

 

Surprisingly though, when Dean finally looked down at his hand, resolutely ignoring Sam’s badly suppressed snickers, he found the skin there as good as new, the scar having all but disappeared. He supposed Castiel must have healed the cut when he wasn’t paying attention. That he felt some of the warmth rush back to his body at that thought, was a secret Dean would take with him to the grave.

 

“So, is that it? Is it over?” asked Sam curiously, looking at Gabriel.

 

“Well, almost. All but the blessings, that is,” Gabriel answered, reaching out with both hands towards the newly-bound pair.

 

Dean only had a moment’s time to see Gabriel’s fingers make contact with Castiel’s forehead, causing the latter’s eyes to glaze over, before he felt fingers touch his own skin, his consciousness receding deep into his mind and out of his reach.


	6. Recuperation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoy the chapter. Let me know what you think! :)

“What the Hell do you think you’re doing?” cried Sam, hands on his weapon, jumping back in shock at the sight of his brother and the other Angel collapsing at his feet, unconscious.

 

“Relax, Sammy,” grinned Gabriel, enjoying the younger Winchester’s disgruntlement. “This’ll just make them easier to transport. Knowing your brother, if he had a say in it he’d probably have insisted we trek all the way back to that hole in the wall motel you two are currently calling home. Besides, soul binding rituals aren’t a walk in the park, you know. They need to rest.”

 

With an exasperated shake of his head, Gabriel bent down on one knee and gathered his brother into his arms, picking him up as easily as though he weighed nothing. “Mind taking a hold of Deano over there, Sammy?” he asked, gazing down at the figure of the collapsed hunter with mild disdain. “This’ll be a lot easier if I don’t have to drag him by the scruff of his neck.”

 

Swallowing back an agitated protest on behalf of his brother, Sam did as he was told, bending down to pick the unconscious man off the ground. Despite the difference in their heights, supporting the full weight of an insensate Dean was no mean task; and after a few moments of struggle, Sam finally managed to get him off the floor, half carrying him and half holding him awkwardly into an upright position.

 

“Now what?” he demanded of the cocky Angel, somewhat churlishly.

 

“And now, my dear Sammy,” began Gabriel with a twinkle in his eye that made Sam distinctly uncomfortable, “We _fly_!”

 

 And before Sam had a chance to protest, Gabriel’s fingers had flown out to touch his forehead, throwing the world into chaos as reality seemed to dissolve around him, only to re-form itself moments later into what appeared to be a large suite in a luxury hotel.

 

 _“Wha–where? What in the name of God is this?”_ he demanded dizzily, staggering back on his feet and nearly dropping Dean in his surprise.

 

“Aww, don’t bring Daddy into this, kiddo,” rebuked Gabriel in a voice of mild reproach. “This is – what is it you mortals are calling it these days? Ah yes, a _honeymoon suite_!” he finished, with far more enthusiasm than the topic was due, in Sam’s opinion.

 

“Umm-uh-right,” stammered the younger Winchester, blushing furiously as he deposited his brother awkwardly on the king-sized bed at the centre of the room, his feet dangling stubbornly off the edge of the mattress. “Dean is not gonna be happy about this, you know,” he warned with an exhausted sigh, as he watched the older Angel deposit Castiel gently on the other side of the bed, every limb arranged perfectly in their due position. Truth be told, Sam felt a teeny bit envious of the Angels’ ability to be so darned elegant in all things, even comatose.

 

“The day your brother’s perpetual grumpiness stops me from having my fun, Sammy-boy, will be the day Mikey and Lucy have a make-out session in the Gardens of Eden,” quipped Gabriel with an evil grin that would have made the aforementioned Devil proud. If the man had grown two horns on his head at that very moment, Sam would not have been surprised.

 

“But seriously, umm, Gabriel,” Sam continued stubbornly, unfazed by his companion’s flippancy.  “We don’t have the cash to pay for this, umm –” he looked around at the palatial room hesitantly, “Luxury suite, or wherever it is you’ve brought us. Besides, job like ours? We try to maintain a... _low_ _profile_ , you know?”

 

Gabriel, as was his wont, paid him no heed; wandering around the room aimlessly, running his fingers lightly over the walls and random pieces of expensive furniture. At long last, he turned back to face the younger man, seemingly satisfied with the ambience.

 

“One of the many advantages of having Angels for in-laws, Sammy boy, is that you come and go where you please, as you please, and there are precious few beings on this planet that could stop you from living anywhere on this dustbowl that catches your fancy.”

 

“So, umm, we can board here for free?” asked Sam, confused.

 

For a moment, the Angel said nothing, and Sam was beginning to think he had gone off into another one of his weird contemplative moods when suddenly, Gabriel threw his head back and laughed – the sound so exquisitely melodious that the hunter felt he might be entranced. When finally Gabriel had gotten his giggles under control, Sam demanded angrily, “ _What?_ ”

 

“Oh nothing,” answered the Angel, still chuckling softly, his gaze wandering to one of the large French windows to the side. “It’s just that I can finally see what Daddy might have seen in the two of you. Why he chose you.”

 

“Huh?” asked Sam, now too confused and tired to even form full sentences.

 

“I tell you, Sam, that with our power you can go wherever you want, do as you please and that no force on Earth could stop you,” Gabriel began, looking wonderingly at Sam as though he were a particularly intriguing starfish. “And all that you can think to ask me about is the hotel bill?”

 

“Well we really _don’t_ have the money to pay for this room right now. And I’d rather not be arrested for theft and fraud come tomorrow morning, if it’s all the same to you,” explained Sam slowly, wondering what all the fuss was about.

 

Instead of answering, however, Gabriel merely shook his head slowly, a small, bemused smile on his lips. And if Sam had not fought demons, been killed, been revived and then watched his brother be blackmailed by an Angel and get hitched to another all in the span of twenty-four hours without sleep, he might have had the energy to appreciate the magnitude of his achievement in having confounded an Archangel. As it was, however, his vision was already blurring with sleep, and as he sat down at the foot of the large bed, the soft mattress dipping welcomingly under his weight, he realised for the first time how utterly exhausted he was.

 

***

 

Sam groaned, scrunching his eyes shut tightly against the relentless flood of sunlight attacking his senses. He turned over sleepily, trying to find some dark nook or cranny to press his face into, only to be met squarely on the jaw with what appeared to be a rather calloused foot –

 

“ _Yikes!_ ” he yelped, jerking awake, just in time to catch himself from toppling clean over the edge of the bed. “Uggh!” he groaned again, wiping the remnants of what appeared to b drool from the side of his mouth before finally sitting up on the dishevelled mattress and looking around himself in a disoriented manner, trying to get his bearings.

 

As he ran his fingers over his sleep-drenched eyes, trying to get them working properly again, his sight fell on the quiet, trench-coat clad figure standing near the large windows, silhouetted against the sunlight, and the last twenty-four hours came rushing back to him in a storm.  The memories were like a punch to the gut, sudden and unexpected, knocking the air out of him. He looked around himself once again, trying to make sure it hadn’t all been an elaborate dream.

 

The room was as he remembered it – all understated elegance and muted, yet beautiful colours, littered with expensive furniture and unlike anything the Winchesters had ever inhabited before. As his eyes roamed further, they fell on his brother, still lying sprawled comfortably on his side of the large bed, limbs spread out in all directions and completely dead to the world. Looking down, Sam realised it had been Dean’s foot that had woken him, jutting out over the mattress as it still was. He felt some embarrassment at the realization that he had fallen asleep at the foot of his brother’s bed the night before; but well, he had been _exhausted_ , and it wasn’t as if he’d been interrupting anything. He glanced over at his brother’s sleeping form once again, almost automatically – just to be sure – and as expected Dean was clad from head to toe in the same dirty and partly torn attire in which he had collapsed in the forest last night, giving no indication that he had woken at all since then. Castiel’s side of the bed, by contrast, was as perfectly neat and tidy as it had been when they had first arrived at the room last night, before Gabriel had placed his unconscious brother on the bed. It didn’t look like it had been slept in at all, the mattress perfectly even, not a thread out of place, and once again Sam felt a sense of wonder at the Angels’ weird ethereality. Well, at least _they_ didn’t have to make their beds after a good night’s sleep, he thought with a sigh.

 

Dragging himself off the unusually comfortable bed with some reluctance, Sam trudged over slowly to the attached washroom, taking care to keep his movements reasonably quiet so as not to wake Dean. He remembered Gabriel’s warning about the soul-bond draining its participants, and glanced over once more at Castiel, wondering if the Angel had regained all his strength by now. The object of his scrutiny, however, didn’t seem to have moved a muscle since Sam had woken up, standing at the window as still as a statue, surrounded by sunlight.

 

With a shrug, Sam entered the washroom, shutting the door behind him. He would be in no condition to make conversation with otherworldly beings until he had washed the sleep out of his system and freshened up. He held his palm under the faucet at the basin, splashing his face with warm water before stripping off his clothes and standing under the shower, once again as warm and comfortable as he had ever had the pleasure of experiencing. When he finally felt human again, clean, awake and devoid of the sweat, dust and grime that was a constant companion on the road, he stepped out of the shower. With a grin, he dried himself slowly on the soft and fluffy hotel towel that he felt sure his brother would have scoffed at as too girly, and stepped out of the washroom, once again buttoning up his shirt.

 

Running his fingers through his pleasantly wet hair and feeling inordinately pleased with his newly clean and well-shaven appearance, Sam searched the room with his eyes until he had located a little dressing table tucked away in one corner, complete with a multitude of products and strange contraptions presumably meant for some form of personal grooming. Shaking his head in confusion, the younger Winchester simply reached for the nearest comb and ran it once through his hair, smiling up at his rather civilised-looking reflection in the mirror. After the fiasco that was the last twenty-four hours, he almost didn’t recognise himself.

 

It was finally time to talk to his newly minted brother-in-law, Sam decided eventually, turning to look at the unmoving figure by the window.


	7. Grief & Comfort

Sam walked up to the immobile figure hesitantly, softly clearing his throat to draw the Angel’s attention. When that produced no discernible results, he called out Cas’ name, addressing him by the nick-name he remembered Dean using sometime during the jumbled haze that was the night before. Still, the Angel remained unresponsive, and Sam began to wonder if he had somehow gone into some kind of delayed shock. Did Angels even experience shocks like humans did? Hell, if anyone had reason to be catatonic, it was Sam. He had just died last night, after all.

 

Seeing no alternative, Sam finally lifted his hand, and extending his fingers cautiously, tapped lightly on the Angel’s shoulder, unsure of how he would react. “Hey Cas,” he prompted, fingers still on the shorter man’s shoulder. “You alright in there?”

 

At his touch, Castiel seemed to snap out of his reverie, and spun around to face the younger Winchester. For a moment, they both stood stock still – Cas trying to get his bearings after having snapped out of whatever dreamland he’d been stuck in, and Sam suddenly unsure of how to begin an early morning tête-à-tête with an obviously confused Angel of the Lord.

 

Eventually, Cas seemed to get a grip of himself, shaking off whatever thoughts had held him so entranced, and inclined his head slightly at his companion in what seemed to Sam to be some form of a strange greeting.

 

“Sam Winchester,” began Castiel in that soft, deep voice of his – slightly raspy as if from disuse – that had almost been drowned out the night before amidst Gabriel’s incessant, high-pitched chirping. “Forgive me. I had been...preoccupied,” he finished, hesitantly. Somehow, Sam got the feeling that his hesitation sprang more from an inability to explain himself than from a desire to keep secrets from his companion.

 

“Yeah, hope I didn’t interrupt you there. You seemed pretty deep in thought. I was just worried you had gone into shock or something, y’know.”

 

Once again, the Angel tilted his head slightly to the side like an inquisitive sparrow, as if Sam were speaking a foreign language that puzzled him, but he was too polite to say so. “I am not sure I understand,” he said eventually. “I was listening to the songs of the Host. It has gotten rarer, since the fighting began, their voices have faded.” There was something in Castiel’s tone as he said this that made Sam incredibly sad, though he had no idea exactly what he was sad about. “And on Earth, so far from home, it’s even harder to hear them. They don’t speak much anymore. They’re afraid, of being overheard and betrayed by their own brethren.”

 

Suddenly, Cas sounded incredibly tired, and Sam felt an indescribable urge to understand, to make the lost Angel before him feel slightly better, even if momentarily. Besides, there was a part of him that had always hungered for knowledge, no matter what its source.

 

“The Host? You mean the Host of Heaven? The other Angels?” he asked curiously.

 

“Yes,” Castiel agreed, accompanied by a slight inclination of his head. He seemed to have forgotten his own troubles in the face of Sam’s almost childish curiosity. “The Host of Heaven. My brothers.”

 

“But if they’re in Heaven,” began Sam, confused, tilting his head in an unconscious imitation of his companion. “How can you hear them from here? Is it some form of telepathy?” he asked, intrigued.

 

“I am not certain I understand you,” Cas answered, further resembling a sparrow by the minute. He began moving away from the window and Sam followed him. “When the Host sings in Heaven, every Angel in existence can hear them; no matter which realm or dimension they are in. It is how we communicate, the source of our power.”

 

“So it’s like, umm,” Sam hesitated, grasping for an appropriate description for the phenomenon that had just been explained to him. “Like an Angel-radio?”

 

“There are no electronic contraptions involved in the process,” the Angel assured him with a bemused expression on his face. “But I suppose, in mortal terms, that would be an apt description,” he conceded.

 

“So Mr. Feathery Ass knows what a radio is, eh?” Dean rasped from his reclining position on the bed, voice still heavy with sleep but laced with obvious amusement at the conversation he had just overheard.

 

Sam, who had sat down on one of the plush, fluffy sofas on the other side of the room during the course of the conversation, jumped about a foot into the air in surprise. “A little heads up next time wouldn’t kill you, you know Dean?” He growled angrily, glaring at his brother while simultaneously trying to cover for his terrified reaction.

 

Cas, for his part, gave not the slightest indication of surprise, simply turning slightly towards Dean before continuing his explanation calmly. “I do not,” he began matter-of-factly, giving no indication of offence at being called a ‘feathery-ass’. “My...vessel, James Novak; he liked to listen to the radio with his family, in the evenings.” That strange sadness seemed to have returned to Castiel’s voice, and Sam noticed that his eyes were lowered, gazing intently at the floor. “I do not have his mind or his feelings, but I can access his knowledge, his memories, if required.”

 

“What do you mean he _liked_ listening to the radio?” questioned Dean warily, eyeing the Angel up and down. “He’s still in there somewhere, ain’t he?” he demanded gruffly, indication Castiel’s trench-coat clad vessel with a casual wave of his hand.

 

“No,” Castiel whispered, his eyes downcast and his voice weighed by such an acute sadness that it made Sam wonder if the Angel had actually been friends with his own vessel. “We were...attacked; Gabriel and I, by some of our brothers, soon after coming to Earth. We eventually managed to defeat them, but the fight was fierce, and I sustained some injuries. Injuries that the human body was not crafted to survive. James’ soul left his body, departed to Heaven,” he finished softly.

 

“To the same Heaven that is presently being torn apart by civil-war?” demanded Dean coldly, glaring at the Angel, and Castiel seemed to cringe at his accusing tone. “Fat lot of good that’d do him, I’m sure,” he finished sarcastically.

 

“ _Dean_!” Sam hissed, wanting to shut his brother up. Couldn’t he see that the Angel was already tying himself into knots with guilt and regret as it was? What was the point of rubbing it in even further? Sometimes, Sam wondered if Dean was just being a self-righteous dick for the sake of it.

 

“What?!” Dean demanded angrily, glaring at his brother. “Are you going to pretend that it’s alright for these supernatural _things_ that call themselves _Angels_ –” Dean sneered at the word derisively before moving on. “To come flying into Earth whenever it fucking suits them and trick innocent people into becoming their meat-suits? Only to then blow them up and let them die, all to resolve a petty family squabble? These are human lives we are talking about, Sammy!”

 

“I _know_ that!” snapped Castiel, seeming finally to have had enough of Dean’s tirade. “James was not just my vessel, Dean Winchester. He was my friend, my comrade. If there was anything, anything at all that I could have done to protect him, I would have.”

 

“Well, why didn’t you then?” Dean asked with unmasked derision in his voice. “If you managed to save your own ass, you could have saved his too. Hell, you could just have left him alone and out of your little family feud! But no, of course not. For that you’d actually have to have a respect for human life, wouldn’t ya?”

 

“ _Dean_ ,” Sam warned, getting more and more worried for both his brother and the Angel. Dean was seething from years of pent up resentment against God and all things divine, blaming Heaven for having failed to protect their family all those years ago, for all the pain he had had to suffer as a consequence of that failure. But Castiel didn’t understand any of that, and Sam could see that he was hurt by Dean’s scathing words. That, in combination with his own sorrow, guilt and regret, was making him hostile and defensive, and Sam had no illusions about who would win in a fight between his brother and the Angel.

 

Dean, however, was too angry to heed the warning, and continued.  “You call yourselves Angels, but you’re nothing but a bunch of glorified monsters, no better than the rest of those abominations that we hunt. You ripped a man away from his family and then, when that wasn’t enough, you killed him. All of it just ‘coz you couldn’t get on with your bratty brothers?”

 

For a moment, Castiel sat stock-still, and the temperature around him seemed to have dropped a few degrees.  The tension in the air was almost palpable, and Sam’s hand instinctively reached for the closest thing that could be used as a weapon. The lights in the room flickered ominously, and for a moment Sam could have sworn he heard thunder cackling outside.

 

As soon as it had arrived, however, the tension left the room, and all of a sudden Castiel deflated, his shoulders slumping forward and all of that preternatural energy leaving his form as if it had never been. He suddenly looked no more than a very confused and miserable young man.

 

“You’re right,” he whispered finally, burying his face in his hands. “We had no right. I had no right to bring James into this. To bring any of you into this. God’s last commandment to us was to protect humanity, and how miserably we have failed at it! James’ death was my responsibility, as is the destruction that Heaven’s war shall wreak upon this planet. If my brothers want Brother Lucifer back, if that’s the only way to stop these atrocities from happening –”

 

“Hey hey! Slow down there Cas!” Sam interrupted, carefully wrapping an arm around the smaller man who had hunched over into something resembling a foetal position. “Dont listen to Dean, he’s an ass,” Sam advised sagely, glaring daggers at his brother, who was spluttering indignantly. But Cas’ obvious regret over the death of James Novak seemed to have knocked the fight out of Dean more effectively than any arguments could have, leaving behind a kind of ineffectual anger, directed not at the Angel, but at the world in general.

 

“I don’t know about you, man, but I’m starving,” Dean muttered eventually, pushing himself off the bed and snatching his leather jacket off the hangar on the wall with slightly more force than was strictly necessary. “I’m going to find breakfast. Come along later if you feel up to it, ladies.” And with that last parting shot, Dean fled the room in search of food, leaving Sam alone with his new Angelic husband.

 

For all his people-skills (which far exceeded his brother’s, any day of the week), Sam had no idea how to console a grieving Angel. It wasn’t like these situations came with an instruction manual. For lack of any better ideas, he decided to try the time-tested lure of apple pie. It always worked like a charm on Dean anyway, so it was worth a shot.

 

“Hey Cas,” he began softly, trying not to startle the Angel any more than necessary. “Wanna come down to breakfast with me? We can steal Dean’s apple-pie, as payback for him being a dick,” he offered with a wink, standing up and extending his hand to the still hunched-over Seraph.

 

At the sound of Sam’s voice, Castiel finally looked up at his companion, his face clouded with confusion and misery. For some reason, the sight made Sam’s heart clench with some incomprehensible emotion, and he decided once again to have a talk with his brother about being a self-righteous ass to confused heavenly beings.

 

“I don’t need to eat, Sam,” he replied finally, his voice hoarse. His eyes were bright with what appeared to be unshed tears, and Sam sighed again, forcing himself to smile despite his own disorientation with the morning’s events.

 

“Dean would have a fit if he heard anyone refusing apple-pie, you know,” he confided conspiratorially. “First thing about being human? We don’t do things coz we need to. We do them coz we _want_ to!”

 

Finally, a small smile appeared on the Angel’s lips, and he met Sam’s eyes with something akin to humour in his own. Sam didn’t know if the room really got a little brighter with Castiel’s smile, or if it was just his imagination, but a weight seemed to have been lifted from his chest when Castiel took his hand and pulled himself off the sofa in one fluid movement.

 

“I am not human, Sam,” Castiel reminded him gravely, as the taller man held the door open for him to pass.

 

“Stick with us, and pretty soon you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference,” the younger Winchester assured him with a grin, and if the sight of Castiel’s smile made him feel a little less cynical about humanity himself, nobody ever needed to know about it.

 


	8. Chaos in Paradise

“You’re back, brother,” said a deep, sonorous voice that seemed to echo in the vast space that spread out endlessly in all directions.  It should have been physically impossible, but what was physical law to the greatest extant power in the multiverse?

 

“As you can clearly see, I am,” replied Gabriel flippantly, folding his wings to walk up beside his older brother. “Not that you would need vision for such a trivial purpose, of course.” He added haughtily, playfully imitating his companion’s style.

 

Michael ignored the jibe. Gabriel was one of the only beings in creation who would have the audacity to speak to him in such a manner. The only other creature that had ever been flippant to him was locked away in a cage in the depths of Damnation. The Archangel sighed softly, gazing thoughtfully out at the serene, beauteous gardens stretching out before him in all directions, multi-hued flowers mixing with technicolour clouds to create a vision of divinity unimaginable to mortals. To think what raging fires lurked beneath this facade of tranquillity. He turned once more towards his companion, stretching out his wings in a flare of fiery brilliance that would have blinded mortal eyes.

 

“I take it your mission is complete,” he prompted patiently. It would be of little use to rush his brother, he knew. Gabriel did what he wanted to do, when he wanted to do it – and that included reporting to his sibling.

 

The younger Angel shrugged nonchalantly. He had never cared much for the splendours of Paradise, and now he turned away from the vision of Eden that held his brother so entranced, to fly up onto one of the fluffier clouds and flop down on it haphazardly, spraying water droplets everywhere and probably causing a minor thunder-storm in some corner of the planet. Sighing exasperatedly, Michael stretched his wings and joined him.

 

“I don’t know what Daddy was thinking, Mike,” Gabriel grumbled petulantly, having taken out one of those ghastly mortal confectionaries that he seemed to be so fond of and plopping it into his mouth with an orgasmic moan of satisfaction. Michael considered reprimanding the other for that horrific distortion of his name, but held himself back. He could not afford to show it, but he was worried about Castiel.

 

“What do you mean,” he asked mildly, instead.

 

“Oh you know what I mean, Mikey,” Gabriel began. Apparently the distortions became more outrageous the more agitated Gabriel was. Michael folded his hands firmly on his lap to keep himself from reaching out and pulling the lollipop out of his brother’s mouth. What satisfaction the Messenger derived from such strange mortal eccentricities, Michael could not begin to comprehend.

 

“I mean, a couple of hapless mortals!” Gabriel was continuing with much indignation in his voice, and Michael forced himself to concentrate on his words, slurred as they were around the lollipop. “What could they possibly hope to accomplish? If anything, they would just be a liability on Cas. How in the name of all that’s unholy could they hope to defend against an Angelic attack? They would be as vulnerable as sitting ducks, and our brother with them.”

 

“Castiel is stronger than you realise, brother. He is God’s ultimate Creation, his finest. He shall not be felled that easily,” answered Michael, with a confident serenity that always seemed to elude Gabriel, no matter how hard he tried to emulate it in moments of fraternal crisis. “Father’s plans have never failed before, have they?” he asked, turning slightly to gaze intently at his brother.

 

“Well, I would feel better about that if I knew what those plans _are_!” retorted the Messenger angrily. “For all we know, Brother, He could have intended for Cas to die all along. He could have intended for _all_ of us to die. He was never the most predictable of dudes, was he?” he demanded, suckling viciously on the scarlet toffee.

 

“If that is indeed his plan, Brother, then that is how it shall be,” Michael answered, unfazed. Nothing seemed to faze him, thought Gabriel bitterly. Well, nothing but the one they were all desperately trying to keep locked up in his infernal cell, he mused. But Gabriel wasn’t cruel enough to use that weapon against his brother. Michael had done nothing to deserve it. At least, not yet, thought Gabriel firmly, gazing at the greatest Archangel through the corner of his eyes. If he were to endanger Castiel, to risk him in any way, fraternal loyalty be damned, Gabriel would pull out all the stops to oppose him. For now, however, he contented himself with stretching out his wings and flying up to float above his brother.

 

“You realise, of course, that there is a traitor in our midst,” began Gabriel nonchalantly, carefully observing his brother for any reactions. He gave none.

 

“Yes, I had been wondering when you would speak of it,” replied Michael calmly, without looking up at the other Angel hovering over his head in mid-air. His gaze remain fixed on the wide vistas of vibrant galaxies ahead. “We are losing soldiers. Three have been killed in the past week alone. Someone is informing the Rebels about our soldiers’ whereabouts. This can’t be allowed to continue.”

 

“We’re losing our brothers and sisters,” Gabriel retorted angrily, sweeping down to stand before his brother. “ _On both sides_ , we lose them every day! Not just soldiers, Michael, our _brothers and sisters_ , or have you forgotten that?” he demanded, eyes blazing accusingly. “Why is it that we hold humanity in such contempt, when we seem to have emulated the worst of them?”

 

Michael sighed. He wished he could share his younger brother’s passion, his zeal for protecting all Angels with equal resolve. It was not that he did not love Gabriel, or the others, but he found himself incapable of showing love as fervently as Gabriel could. As Lucifer had demanded.

 

“I do not take pleasure in their deaths, Brother,” he said at last, unfolding his wings and letting himself be lifted into space, eye to eye with Gabriel once more. “If it was in my power to stop them...”

 

“I know,” groaned Gabriel tiredly, turning away guiltily from his brother. He knew that Michael cared about them, about all the Angels, but his obsession with being Daddy’s obedient little boy sometimes got on Gabriel’s nerves like nothing else. If it weren’t for his unflinching determination to let God’s plan unfold in its own course, all of this mess could have been avoided. Gabriel tried, but sometimes he couldn’t help but blame his eldest brother for all the bloodshed and mayhem that had overtaken them since God abandoned Heaven.

 

“I will deal with it,” he said at last, preparing to fly away. He couldn’t deal with Michael’s nonchalance at the moment. He wanted to be back on Earth. “Whoever it is, I will find him.”

 

“And when you do?” asked Michael, raising one curious eyebrow. He was testing him, Gabriel knew, but he did not know what it was that the Archangel expected of him. “What will you do when you have discovered the traitor, Gabriel?” the cool voice questioned once again.

 

And in that moment, Gabriel knew what Michael was asking of him. Drawing in a deep breath, he stretched out his enormous wings to their farthest limit, obscuring half the sky. “I will kill him,” he answered, his eyes cold.

 

***

 

Gabriel flew through the inter-dimensional ether, his senses alert, searching for the sickly sweet aura of one of the Cupids that inhabited the lower Heavens.

 

Gabriel didn’t particularly look forward to this conversation. Cupids were a rather... _specialised_ class of Angels, and not very smart. They also tended to have rather single-track minds. Interrogating one was a task requiring more patience than Gabriel felt he currently possessed.

 

As a source of information, though, they were quite invaluable. They were some of the only Angels allowed to roam the Earth freely throughout the millennia, even when all the others (including the Archangels) had been banned from the mortal realms after Christ’s fall. Due to the nature of their job, they needed to be in constant proximity of the humans, and they picked up all kinds of interesting titbits as a result. While the least powerful, the Cupids were also the most numerous among Angels, and shared a kind of telepathic link with each other that they used to communicate the locations of distant lovers, or some such, Gabriel wasn’t entirely sure. The point was, what one Cupid knew, all Cupids knew, and all together they knew quite a lot.

 

The problem, however, was extracting this incredible cornucopia of information from a Cupid. This was not because they were particularly secretive beings, nor because they held up particularly well to interrogation. If anything, it was the opposite – Cupids were delicate beings, easily intimidated, and it didn’t take much to reduce them to a blubbering, nervous wreck, following which they became utterly incomprehensible. One had to be particularly careful when dealing with a Cupid, to prevent just such an outcome. No, the problem lay in the fact that, as mentioned before, the Cupids possessed rather single track minds. As a result, they rarely understood the significance of the information they picked up, or cared about it when they did. The end of the world could be happening right under their noses, and all a Cupid would be thinking about was how to make Harry fall for Sally post apocalypse.

 

With a long-suffering sigh, the Messenger left his perch somewhere above the stratosphere and swooped down gently into the lower layers of the atmosphere, where he had just spotted one of the naked Angels aiming a rather dull arrow at some hapless target beneath the clouds. Gabriel couldn’t be bothered to scan past the fog to see who the unfortunate soul was. He had urgent business to attend to. Folding his wings into as unthreatening a position as he could manage, he landed smoothly beside the Cupid. “Hello, Brother.”

 

The little, naked being with small fluffy tufts for wings jumped as if he had been attacked by Hell hounds.

 

“O-oh my God! Brother Gabriel, you startled me!” the hapless creature stammered miserably, drawing his arrow away from the bow somewhat sadly. “H-how may I help you?”

 

Gabriel groaned internally. He so wasn’t cut out for this crap. He wondered guiltily for a moment if this was how Michael felt when dealing with the rest of them – _he_ had certainly never wasted any efforts to make himself comprehensible to his eldest brother. Perhaps this was one of Dad’s roundabout ways of teaching him the merits of fraternal cooperation.

 

“I was in need of some important information, Brother,” Gabriel answered patiently, making his voice as amiable as possible under the circumstances. It was at times like these that he missed the Winchesters. Human or not, at least _they_ didn’t expect him to handle them with velvet gloves. Velvet gloves simply didn’t become Gabriel.

 

“O-oh,” stammered the Cupid, gazing about himself in a rather confused manner. “I don’t think I can help you there, Brother,” admitted the Cherub dejectedly. Cupids liked being helpful, and were profoundly saddened if they couldn’t be. “I don’t have any important information, I’m sure,” he continued, tears in his eyes.

 

“Oh but I’m sure you do, Brother,” Gabriel said encouragingly, patting the Cherub’s naked shoulder coaxingly. Angels weren’t supposed to have migraines, but Gabriel was sure he could feel one coming on, full throttle. “Just try to remember something for me, won’t you? It is very important that you tell me everything that you remember, alright?”

 

The Cupid nodded, still seeming a bit dazed but willing enough to follow the Archangel’s instructions.

 

“Sister Sachiel, one of our agents on Earth, you do remember her, yes?” asked Gabriel gently, bracing himself for the inevitable consequence of asking such a question.

 

As expected, the Cherub’s eyes welled up once again and a soft whimper left his plump red lips. “Y-yes. S-she is d-dead,” he answered at last, sniffling desolately.

 

Gabriel sighed tiredly. Sachiel had been a part of his regimen, one of his protégés. Her death had pained him; if possible, even more so than the others’. But unlike the Cherubs, he couldn’t afford to break down into tears. What he _could_ do, however, was hunt down the one responsible for her demise and make him pay for his crimes.

 

“She is, Brother. And I need you to tell me when it was that any of you saw her last. Where was she, and who was she with? You must tell me everything, Brother. It is of great importance that you leave out no detail,” he prodded, his voice gentle, coaxing.

 

After a few moments of further sniffling, the Cherub finally seemed to regain some semblance of self-control. At Gabriel’s behest, he nodded hesitantly, his demeanour still unsure, but he prepared himself to fulfil the Archangel’s request all the same. For a moment, the Cupid’s eyes glazed over, his body stilling in an unnatural stupor. Gabriel waited patiently.

 

His communication with the other Cherubs finally over, the Cupid seemed to come back to himself, shaking his head dazedly as if in an attempt to shake off a bad memory.

 

“Did you learn something, Brother?” Gabriel asked tenderly.

 

The Cupid nodded slowly, a hint of hesitation in his eyes. “One of us saw her in a village named Findlay, in the region they call Illinois on Earth. He had been ordered to oversee the consummation of a wedding, not that they usually wait that long anymore,” he informed Gabriel happily before continuing. “But after nightfall, he had seen Sister Sachiel enter the village Church, long after the wedding party had left.”

 

“And was there anyone with her?” asked Gabriel.

 

“No, she was alone,” answered the Cupid. Then, after a few more seconds of dazed stupor, he blinked dizzily before elaborating, “My Brother says that another Angel had entered the Church some time after Sister Sachiel, just as he had been about to leave the village.”

 

“Oh yes? You’re doing well, Brother,” encouraged the Messenger persuasively. “Who was the other Angel who had followed Sachiel into the Church?”

 

With a look of immense concentration on his face, the Cherub scrunched his eyes shut, as if trying to see something through another’s eyes. “Brother Uriel,” he murmured at last, dazedly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you think. :)


	9. Sugary Hope

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am very sorry for the long delay. In an ideal world, we would be writing fanfic for exams. This being a distinctly non-ideal world, however, I've been obliged to spend the last few weeks mugging up textbooks instead. :( 
> 
> Well, thankfully all that is over now, and we can get back to the really important business of life. Do let me know what you think of the chapter. :)
> 
> P.S. Being that I have never been to America, or even anywhere near it, all the descriptions of people and places are entirely imaginary, save for what little I could pick up from the internet. So if there are any inaccuracies, please let me know. They are unintentional, and I would really appreciate some help in that department.

_Things could have been worse,_ Sam reflected philosophically, staring blankly out the window as the sparse scenery of the deserted highway shot by the speeding Impala. _They could definitely have been much worse._ For instance, Gabriel could have left without repairing the all-but-obliterated vehicle they were currently travelling in. Losing the Impala wouldn’t have sat well with Dean, even less so than the rest of this mess was sitting well with him. And if Sam were completely honest with himself, he couldn’t deny the fact that the ancient car held a special place in his heart, too. Its demise would have been painful to them both.

 

Not that things were particularly good, as they stood. Gabriel’s presence of mind might have saved them all a major shit-storm when Dean discovered that his beloved car had been abandoned miles away in that godforsaken forest, but seeing the glass half-full wasn’t exactly a Winchester specialty. Sam was man enough to admit that he probably wouldn’t have fared much better in similar circumstances. He had a rather unfortunate tendency of going off the deep end in stressful situations. But the point of it was that Dean was sulking. Yep, there wasn’t any other word for it. Sulking was what his brother was doing, although he made every effort to make it look like manful indifference instead; driving well over the speed limit while listening to classic rock at full blast, loud enough to make Sam’s ears buzz.

 

They had been travelling for hours at a stretch, Dean having summarily refused to stop for lunch, and Sam was tired. And famished. The only mercy of it all was that Castiel seemed to be utterly oblivious to the awkwardness of the situation. Once installed in the back-seat of the car, he had proceeded to spend the rest of the day with his head all but stuck out of the window, gazing with wide-eyed wonder at everything that passed the car. Grazing cows and tractors, fields and forests all seemed to hold an equal fascination for him.

 

Well, at least one of them was enjoying themselves. Sam sighed. So long as Cas remained preoccupied with God’s green Earth, he would hopefully not notice Dean’s foul mood. Besides which the trip had successfully distracted him from the Jimmy Novak issue, which Sam considered a blessing. He did not know if it was an Angel thing or if he was simply being hyper-sensitive, but Cas seemed to _radiate_ his emotions. They weren’t very easy to ignore. And Sam did not appreciate the thought of spending an entire day cooped up with a miserable Angel, in addition to his seething elder brother. Leaning back into his seat, Sam closed his eyes tiredly. How they always managed to get themselves into these situations, he would never know.

 

The car jerked to an abrupt halt, almost throwing Sam face forward into the windshield. His seatbelt was the only thing that had kept him from landing in an undignified heap on the floor. “ _Hey!_ ” he protested angrily, shaking his head in a bewildered manner to clear it of the last remaining vestiges of sleep. He hadn’t realised that he’d fallen asleep. _When did that happen?_ “What’s going on?” he muttered, stifling a yawn even as he rubbed vehemently at his bleary eyes, forcing them back into focus.

 

“Chow time,” Dean replied curtly, stepping out of the car with a brief click of the door. “Chop chop ladies.” And before Sam could register anything more than the vague, garish lights of some cheap diner some distance off the road, Dean had already walked through the colourfully decorated door and into the building, his pace fast enough to almost be considered a jog. It seemed that the hours of enforced proximity had finally gotten on his brother’s nerves as well.

 

By the time Sam had managed to trudge into the diner with an awestruck Cas in tow, gazing at the cheap multicoloured lights in open wonder, Dean was already seated in one of the dingy booths, perusing the menu with determined indifference towards everything but food. Nabbing a chair opposite his brother, he gestured for Cas to take the remaining seat, before clearing his throat in what he hoped was a firm, no-nonsense manner.

 

“Dean,” he began firmly, leaning forward into his seat to better attract his brother’s attention. “You can’t keep ignoring this situation forever, you know.”

 

“There is no ‘situation’ Sammy,” Dean grunted absently without looking up from his perusal of food-items. “I made a deal. That asshole of an Angel kept his end of it and I kept mine. The thing’s over. Forget about it.”

 

“I can’t just _forget_ about it when your _husband_ is sitting right beside us looking at the salt-shaker like it was the most amazing thing since Star Wars!” Sam answered through gritted teeth, making sure to keep his voice low so as not to be overheard by the subject of their conversation. Not that the subject seemed particularly interested in eavesdropping anyway. Sam hadn’t been joking about Castiel’s fascination with the salt-shaker. Every piece of faded cutlery seemed to be a revelation to him.

 

“He’s _not_ my husband!” snapped Dean, looking up from the menu for the first time with something akin to emotion on his face. Sam spared a quick glance at Castiel, but the latter gave no indication of having overheard Dean’s outburst, having now moved on to a thorough examination of the tissue-stand.  Turning back to his brother, he sighed.

 

“Alright, fine. Call him whatever you want, okay? But that doesn’t change the fact that he’s still your responsibility, though. Gabriel left him here in _your_ care.”

 

“He’s not a baby, Sammy,” Dean retorted, exasperation evident in his voice. “What d’you want me to do, huh? He’s a fucking ‘Angel of the Lord’, for God’s sake,” he muttered, in a rather impressive imitation of Gabriel’s haughty tone. “He can take care of himself just fine.”

 

Before Sam could think of an appropriate response to this argument, a tall, leggy brunette appeared before them, notepad in hand. “So honey, what’d you like for dinner?” she asked, the question mostly directed at Dean, full red lips curving slowly into an enticing smile.

 

If his brother had been a cartoon character, Sam was sure Dean’s eyeballs would have been replaced by a couple of hearts right about then. As it was, his eyes lit up and his mouth curved in a reciprocal smile, his manner openly flirty. Sam glanced nervously at Castiel, who had also turned to gaze at the new arrival. The Angel didn’t look hostile though, or even mildly offended. Instead, his head was tilted slightly and his features set in that inquisitive-bird impression he seemed to be so fond of. He was regarding the waitress with the same child-like curiosity he had bestowed so freely on all objects, animate or otherwise, so far.

 

Dean’s gaze wasn’t quite so innocent, though, and eventually Sam felt the need to clear his throat once more to draw his brother’s attention back to Earth. “Umm, three veggie sandwiches with extra broccoli please,” he began.

 

That successfully snapped Dean out of his stupor. Throwing a scandalized glare at his little brother, he proceeded to refute the order. “It’s been a long day Sammy! What do you wanna do? Starve me?! Three extra-large hamburgers with extra cheese–”

 

“–And spinach,” interjected Sam, earning himself a wrathful glare.

 

“And apple-pie,” finished Dean firmly, his jaw set, ready for a fight. “And beer, of course,” he added as an afterthought.

 

_“Of course,”_ Sam muttered with an exasperated sigh. Still, he had managed to get the spinach in through the cracks in Dean’s armour. That had to count for something, hadn’t it?

 

 

When the food finally arrived – accompanied by some more suggestive flirting from the waitress, which Dean enthusiastically reciprocated – Sam was very glad that his brother had chosen a booth somewhat isolated from the main dining area. The orgasmic sounds that escaped Dean’s mouth, upon his first bite of the cheesy hamburger, would have scandalized the regulars something fierce.

 

About halfway through the meal, he noticed that Castiel’s plate had remained nearly untouched, save for the bits and pieces that Dean kept stealing off the Angel’s share every now and then.

 

“You need to eat something, Cas,” Sam urged him, pointing at his untouched plate accusingly. “It’s been a long day, and we still have a long way to go. You’ll need your strength, so eat up.”

 

“I do not need to eat, Sam,” Cas responded, almost absently, gazing with a rather bewildered fascination at Dean, who was busy greedily stuffing his face with saturated fat, having pulled out as much of the veggies as he could from the burger.

 

“Leave him be, Sammy,” Dean interrupted with some difficulty, his mouth full to bursting. “No need to force the guy. I feel you man!” He added sympathetically, turning to Cas. “Sam’s the biggest mother hen this side of the Atlantic. Here, let me help,” he offered magnanimously, scooping up the hamburger off the Angel’s plate and biting into it with another orgasmic moan.

 

“You’re impossible,” Sam sighed, but was unable to stop the fond smile that kept tugging at his lips.

 

If Dean had been enthusiastic about the burger, it didn’t hold a candle to the sheer _ecstasy_ evident on his face when the pie arrived. Sam reflected that there were men who wouldn’t have been half so excited about finding a million dollars lying in their backyards.

 

“This is heaven,” Dean declared contentedly, inhaling deeply on the scent of fresh-baked dessert.

 

Sam half expected the Angel to correct him, as was his wont when faced with such sacrilegious biblical inaccuracy. Castiel seemed otherwise occupied however, staring at his own pie with a mixture of curiosity and incomprehension. Not that Sam blamed him. Dean’s reaction to pie would bewilder the most ordinary of mortals; so Angels could be forgiven their ignorance in that regard.

 

“Dean likes pie,” Sam informed him helpfully.

 

Dean sucked in a scandalized breath in the process of slurping on apple-stuffing. “Do not disrespect Pie, Sammy,” he warned his brother seriously. “We do not _like_ Pie. We _worship_ Pie.”

 

Sam threw up his hands in a placating gesture, and if there had been a confusion-meter attached to Castiel, he was sure it would have sky-rocketed just then. “Don’t listen to him, Cas,” he said soothingly. “He’s just crazy.”

 

“He who disrespects Pie is the crazy one,” Dean said, voice menacing, only to promptly melt into a puddle of sugary contentment with the very next bite. “Eat up,” he urged his companions generously.

 

Sam, taking a careful bite out of his own share, had to admit that the pie _was_ exceptionally well-made, the crust melting invitingly in his mouth for the warm, sweet stuffing to pour out over his palate, the flavour rich and intoxicating.

 

“I don’t–” Cas began once again, only to earn himself an angry glare from Dean.

 

“You don’t eat pie ‘cause you _need_ to, Cas,” Dean told him incredulously, eyes round at such unbelievable blasphemy. You do it ‘cause it’s _pie_!”

 

“Yes Dean, because that explains everything so beautifully,” Sam muttered in exasperation, but Dean was not to be dissuaded.

 

“Here, hold this,” the elder Winchester urged, shoving a piece of the dessert at a very confused-looking Angel, who tentatively reached out to take the offering, eyes wide with surprise. Once Castiel’s fingers had closed securely over the piece, Dean let go, and picked up a piece of his own, lifting it demonstratively to his lips. “Now follow me,” he instructed decisively, inhaling deeply of the piece in his hand, tongue flicking out for an initial taste before he finally bit into the crust itself, a bit of crimson stuffing dribbling down the side of his mouth. Sam reflected with an amused smirk that Dean’s gestures while eating pie wouldn’t have been out of place in an erotica, but refrained from voicing that thought out loud, busy as he was watching his brother teach the otherworldly being  the intricacies of pie-eating. Castiel’s eyes moved curiously over Dean’s face, attempting to imitate his actions in all earnestness, and Sam was hard-put not to burst out laughing at the sight. For all his demurring, the Angel seemed to genuinely enjoy the dessert, despite some initial confusion. Sam made a mental note to make Gabriel try it too the next time he saw him, if only to bring the haughty Archangel down a peg or two with pie-induced bliss.

 

Sam sat back, enjoying the sight of his brother enthusiastically explaining the virtues of apple pie over blueberry pie to an intently attentive Angelic audience of one. He could not remember the last time he had seen Dean this relaxed; truly carefree, not the forced over-the-top debauchery he indulged in whenever he didn’t want Sam to think he was worried. If this could become a regular occurrence, despite the circumstances that had led up to it, Sam could not help but be thankful for the newest addition to their ragtag group.


	10. The Hunt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please don't kill me for the delay. As usual life (and my own laziness) messes with good fanfic. Anyway, this chapter is finally complete. Hope you guys like it! :)

Sam uttered a muffled curse as his foot hit some piece of discarded furniture for the fiftieth time in the last hour. At least he hoped it was furniture. He had had the misfortune of encountering a human skull on his way into this Godforsaken house. But it was so dark inside, he could barely see what was right under his nose. Even the meagre torchlight didn’t seem to be doing much good. Sometimes though, on the more gruesome cases, he preferred it that way.

 

Sam could hardly believe it had only been a few weeks since his death and resurrection in that forest. It almost seemed like a dream now. Like something that had happened years ago, a half-forgotten memory of the distant past. Castiel had settled into human life better than he would have expected, all things considered. But then again, mused Sam rather cynically, theirs wasn’t exactly what one would call a normal human existence. Perhaps it wasn’t so different from Cas’ regular job anyway, smiting demons, destroying evil. Not that he could do much smiting now, though, cut off as he was from the Host. But even at only a fraction of its full strength, and Angel’s power was nothing to be scoffed at. As it was, Sam was pretty sure that the Angel’s usefulness on the field had much to do with Dean’s increasing tolerance of the situation. Initially, Sam had been counting the minutes until his mule-headed brother finally said something that crossed the line, that provoked Castiel into calling forth his divine strength and blowing Dean to smithereens. Thankfully, though, after a few initial missteps, Dean had adjusted rather quickly to the situation. Sam supposed it was a lifetime of hunter-training. After the initial shock of a sudden disaster, survival instinct kicks in, and you do what you have to, to get through it in one piece. Sam sighed resignedly – it was just a hunter’s life that marriage was just another disaster to be survived and gotten over.

 

They travelled across the country, Dean with a sudden fervour for finding cases and supernatural incidents that far exceeded his normal enthusiasm for the family business. Sam didn’t stop him. The more Dean remained distracted from the Angel issue, the better it was for all of them. They hunted, Castiel lending a rather efficient hand whenever things seemed to be getting out of control, and then Dean pranced off to some local seedy bar while Sam retired to the motel along with Castiel, the two of them talking enthusiastically about the forgotten language of some lost prehistoric civilization, which Cas could apparently remember perfectly, as though he had heard it spoken just yesterday. Castiel’s esoteric knowledge base fascinated Sam immensely, and he would often spend hours in the Impala or in one of the dingy motel rooms bombarding the Angel with the most random questions. In this regard, Sam was rather grateful that Castiel was not human. He was pretty sure a human would have been quite freaked out by such obsessive interrogation.  But as nothing and everything seemed extraordinary to the Angel, Sam supposed Cas was yet to figure out how to separate the really weird shit from the regular weird shit, like wendigos.

 

Which is what they had thought they were after, in the beginning, going by all the half-eaten skeletons lying around this desolate heap of a long-forgotten estate. The more time he spent in this place, though, the more Sam began to doubt that initial theory. Wendigos, for all their raw strength and brutality, were primitive creatures. They weren’t exactly known for their planning and organizational skills. This thing, whatever it was, had lured its prey into its lair, not once but numerous times over what seemed to be a rather prolonged period of time, without anyone becoming any the wiser. The estate too was carefully chosen, remote enough to be out of sight of the authorities, but not so much as to pre-empt any human contact. It was close to a rather infrequently used hiking trail, well hidden from the sight of a casual observer, but easily accessible if you knew how to reach it. Personally, Sam did not think a wendigo could plan all this out in such excruciating detail. Dean, however, in typical Dean-fashion, had refused to chalk out a detailed strategy before leaving for the hunt, barrelling in after the trail that the victims had left behind. He had ordered Sam to stay outside the house and keep watch, while he checked out the basement, upon which Sam had promptly turned around and, gun firmly in hand, started for the dilapidated front door of the house. He would be damned if he let his brother’s obsessive coddling keep him from doing his job.

 

Sam was wrenched out of these musings by a blood-curdling shriek somewhere down below, which seemed to make the wooden floor panels vibrate with its intensity. He dashed for the nearest staircase, taking two to three at a time until he reached the dark, stinking mausoleum that he assumed had once been the basement of the house. His feet slipped momentarily as he reached the bottom of the stairs, and he stumbled forward into something that felt eerily like a pool of congealing blood. Revolted and nauseous, he jumped back and shook his head to regain his bearings, squinting in the dark to try and see the way forward. A dim pinprick of light caught his eye, and he began to move cautiously towards it, until he was close enough to see a sight that made his blood turn cold. An enormous, black creature that looked like it’s skin had been peeled away from its body, dark bloody angry-looking blisters spread throughout its gigantic frame, was howling and thrashing about at one end of the basement, a stake sticking out of its right shoulder, spraying black blood all over the mouldy walls and floor. As Sam inched forward, he realised that the light he had seen had been the creature’s eye – it had only one, on the side of the misshapen thing that should have been its face – which looked as though it were actually on fire, burning fiercely even in the complete darkness of the dank basement. Held between the long, skeletal fingers of its other hand was his brother, being haphazardly thrown against one wall or another as the creature thrashed in agony, even as he struggled vainly to try and free himself from the unyielding grip.

 

“ _Dean!_ ” Sam yelled, rushing towards his brother, gun held up in front of him and firing shot after shot at the demonic thing even as he saw his brother’s eyes open wide in panic as he registered Sam’s approach. Dean shook his head frantically, no sound leaving his mouth as his air-supply was further cut off by the death-grip of the creature on his throat. For a moment, the monster seemed not to have registered the shots hitting its body from all directions. Then, it came to a sudden halt, looked about itself in confusion, dropping Dean to the floor in the process, before rounding on Sam with an air of utter bewilderment. Dean, crashing to the floor with a resounding thud and what he suspected might be a twisted ankle, proceeded to cough violently to clear his airway, even as he felt around the floor for his own gun.

 

Even before he had found it, however, he was rocked backwards by the ear-splitting growl that the creature let out once its eye had finally landed on its assailant. The expression on its distorted face morphed into one of unbridled fury as it launched itself at Sam, who jumped back at the last moment and emptied his last bullets into the creature’s plunging head.

 

For a moment, the creature stilled, but even before Sam had had a chance to regroup after the last attack, its ugly, blood-splattered head reared up once again with a guttural howl. It dashed towards the younger Winchester with a speed that belied its enormous size, forcing Sam backwards until his back was pressed against the chilly stone wall of the cellar. His breath hitched painfully as his vision was filled with the nightmarish sight of the demon-spawn moving towards him, gaining ground even as he had nowhere left to run. As the thing raised its bloody claws for the final blow, a shot fired from behind, hitting it just below the misshapen skull, and the creature reared back with a hair-raising howl of pain, like the one that had alerted Sam to its presence in the first place. Swinging its massive body around with an enormous effort, the creature raised its claws high above its head and half mad with pain and fury launched itself at Dean, who had moved up close behind it to aim for the exact spot that would inflict maximum damage. Even as Sam stood transfixed against the wall, unable to move, he saw as if in the slow-motion sequence of a film, his brother stumble back in an effort to get away from the monster, fingers pressing instinctively on the trigger but to no avail; the barrel was empty. He watched helplessly as resignation set in into Dean’s eyes, the fleeting epiphany at the moment of death that one was going to die. Sam wondered half deliriously if it was ironic that he knew the feeling from experience.

 

A tearing, splattering sound rent the air, like tissue and bone being torn and shredded, and Sam felt like somebody had pumped ice into his veins. The air in front of Dean seemed to crackle and rip apart, and even as he watched, the creature’s claws, fresh blood dripping off them, went through a mass of crimson feathers until they came to a searing stop near the bottom of a wing, which flickered in and out of sight even while being torn apart by demonic claws. Castiel, injured wing and all, raised a hand almost casually to the creature’s head, which seemed to spontaneously combust upon contact with the Angel’s fingers, and with a flash of bright light and a splatter of inky blood that covered them all from head to toe, the monster was gone, as if it had never been.

 

“ _Cas!_ ” Dean and Sam exclaimed at once, as the older Winchester grabbed instinctively at the injured Angel, breaking his fall. Castiel’s knees seem to have buckled under him; but he regained his composure momentarily and spoke in his usual husky voice:

 

“I am sorry for the delay, Dean,” he said, still leaning slightly against the other man. “I would have come to your aid sooner, but our brothers stationed in Asia were facing an unexpected attack, and Gabriel needed my help.”

 

“’s alright Cas,” Dean said distractedly, examining the Angel’s blood-soaked trench-coat with worried eyes. His wings had once again disappeared from view, but fresh blood still dripped to the floor along the edges of his coat. “Are you alright?” He asked, running a hand gently along his back as if to feel the condition of his wings, even though he couldn’t see them.

 

“I am fine, Dean,” Castiel assured him, moving slightly away from Dean to stand on his own once again. “It is only a minor injury. It’ll heal with time.”

 

Dean seemed rather doubtful of this assertion, but before he could make any further protests, a sharp gust of wind blew into the basement, temporarily blinding both the brothers. When they opened their eyes once again, the King of Hell stood before them, smirking arrogantly.

 

“Well well well, I see the Winchesters have gotten themselves a new pet. An Angel, no less! Tired of killing humans already? We’ve graduated to Heavenly beings now, have we? How long before you finish this one off too?” he asked casually in that infuriating accent which made Dean bristle even at the best of times; and this certainly wasn’t the best of times.

 

“What’re you jabbering on about you bastard?” Dean growled, moving just a tad closer to Castiel, his stance defensive.

 

“I knew there was something weird about this case!” Sam exclaimed almost triumphantly, sparing a reproachful glance at his brother. “This was your doing, wasn’t it Crowley? What was that creature anyway?” he asked, unable to contain his curiosity any longer.

 

“A sample, Moose,” replied Crowley cryptically, moving in a languid circle around the trio, his posture almost friendly.

 

“A sample of what?” asked Sam warily.

 

“Of the greatness that we can achieve, with your help,” Crowley answered gleefully.

 

“What?!” Dean growled, hand moving to his weapon even as he spoke.

 

“That thing,” began Crowley, voice and posture still as languid and casual as ever. “Was created with a drop of the blood of one of Azazel’s Children. One drop, can you believe it?!” he exclaimed, with almost childish wonder. “Unfortunately, by the time we found him, the boy was almost dead, his blood cold and quite useless. But can you imagine, Sammy, what we could do with the _buckets_ of blood currently flowing through your veins?” He asked enthusiastically, sauntering uncomfortably close to Sam. “How many more monsters we could create? We could rule the world, my little Moose! Or rather, I could. You’d be too dead to be much of a ruler, of course.”

 

“ _Why you son of a bitch!_ ” Dean exclaimed, lunging for the demon, knife in hand. “You stay the fuck away from my brother, you hear me?”

 

But just before Dean’s blade could make contact with Crowley’s skin, the elder Winchester was thrown halfway across the basement which such shattering force that Sam was sure the impact had broken half the bones in his body. Once again, he felt like his blood had turned to ice. He tried to run towards his brother, but even before he could take the first step, Crowley’s hand wrapped around his arm in a vice-like grip and the last thing he remembered was Crowley’s voice whispering ominously in his ear, “You’re coming with me, Sammy.” Then, the whole world faded to black.

 

\--

 

Dean came to with a start, his brother’s name stuck in his throat and a feeling of utter dread clutching at his heart. He sat up with a jerk, uttering a pained groan when the movement rattled what he assumed was a broken rib, going by the searing pain that seemed to light up his whole chest. His vision swam momentarily and his eyes watered from the pain, until his body was once again anchored by a gentle hand on his shoulder.

 

Surprised, Dean opened his eyes to find Castiel kneeling beside him, one hand held lightly before Dean’s chest, the warm healing light he had seen the Angel use on Sam before lighting up the dank chamber and warming his body. He could feel his skin knitting itself back together, even as his broken bones mended themselves automatically.

 

“Where’s Sammy?” he wheezed between shallow breaths, turning to face the Angel directly.

 

For a moment, there was no answer, as Castiel’s powers finished mending his broken body. Then, removing his hands from Dean’s body and folding them onto his lap, the Angel finally looked up to meet Dean’s frantic gaze. “He’s gone,” he whispered, voice laden with obvious regret. “Crowley took him.”

 

Dean’s eyes widened and he felt like his heart had been clutched tight by icy fingers, so that it could no longer beat. “Why didn’t you _stop_ him?” he demanded ferociously, eyes fixed accusingly on the Angel even as he stumbled back onto his feet, grappling for his weapons in the dark.

 

“I didn’t have time,” replied Castiel, an almost pleading note entering his voice, not that Dean could hear it over the roaring of his own blood in his ears. “You were dying. If I had delayed any longer, you would be dead. I didn’t have time to fight Crowley before healing you.”

 

“So you should have let me _die_!” roared Dean, moving almost threateningly towards the Angel. “You shouldn’t have let that demonic bastard take Sammy. Not for anything!”

 

Castiel averted his eyes from the enraged man, saying nothing. There was not much that could be said to Dean, in defence of endangering his brother, however unintentionally, and the Angel seemed to have sensed that.

 

“Where did Crowley take him?” Dean demanded finally, after he had gotten himself slightly under control.

 

“They headed West. I think Crowley intended to take Sam to the city of Rexburg. It contains one of the seals the demons had been hunting.”

 

“Then take me there,” Dean demanded, steeling himself for the journey. Travelling by the Angels’ mode of transportation always made him feel sick, but they didn’t have time to think about such things while Sammy was in danger.

 

“Dean,” the Angel began, sounding slightly unsure. Momentarily, Dean wondered if he was even capable of showing anything more than these supremely muted emotions, like somebody else’s feelings being felt through multiple layers of gauze. Castiel didn’t seem to know what to do with the emotions he felt. “I do not know if my wings shall be able to carry us that far in their current state. They will heal soon, but the journey might not be possible at the moment,” he finished, rather hesitantly, not meeting Dean’s eyes. “Even if we somehow reached the town, I cannot guarantee that I’ll be able to carry both of you out of Crowley’s lair. We might be stepping right into a trap.”

 

“We’ve got to _try_ , Cas!” urged Dean, taking hold of the Angel by his shoulders and pulling him up to his feet. His voice brooked no argument. “We can’t leave Sam with Crowley any longer than we must. Who knows what that sadistic bastard might be doing to my brother?”

 

For a moment, Castiel stood in silence, looking at Dean’s eyes which blazed with intensity. Finally, he released a tiny sigh and nodded, taking his eyes off the human. “You are right,” he said finally, lifting his fingers to Dean’s forehead.

 

\--

 

Unlike the other times Dean had travelled in this manner, they did not land smoothly at their destination. Rather, Dean, along with his escort, crashed down against what appeared to be a small hill. Finally managing to get his feet under him, Dean instinctively reached out to steady Castiel before looking around quizzically. “Where are we?”

 

Castiel, whose eyes seemed somewhat glazed, parted his lips to breathe in a few gulps of fresh air before responding. The action seemed strangely out of character to Dean. He hadn’t realised how accustomed he had become to one of his companions not needing to breathe. That most natural of actions seemed somehow out of place on Castiel.

 

“This is the closest I can bring you, Dean. The demon’s lair is underground,” he paused, pointing towards a dark tunnel partly covered by a rock, a few yards from where they stood. “The entrance is warded against Angels. I cannot enter. Sam is being held in an underground chamber. I can sense his presence.”

 

Dean nodded, some of his confidence and composure returning now that he had a course of action laid out before him. Dean Winchester was a man of action. He thrived when he was kicking down doors and killing monsters to save the innocent. Inaction killed him, paralysing him with futile anxiety.

 

“You stay right here, Cas,” he told his companion, almost cheerfully, though his eyes shone with grim resolve and his stance spoke of barely restrained fury. “I’ll get Sammy and be out of there in a jiffy.”

 

\--

 

Dean had found his brother gagged and tied to a chair in a dank underground chamber not very different from the one they had just left behind. The lack of any guards to keep watch over the captive had seemed suspicious, so he shouldn’t have been surprised by what happened next. Barely had he managed to rip off the gag and cut through the ropes that bound the other man when a horde of rabid demons like the ones that had attacked them in the forest rushed out from what seemed to be a tunnel at the end of the chamber that led further underground.

 

Both Winchesters jumped back, avoiding the initial attacks before drawing their own weapons and slashing at the oncoming demons. But just like in the forest, there seemed to be no end to them. No matter how many they killed, still more poured forth from the tunnel on the other side of the chamber. And while Dean’s own injuries had been healed by Castiel, Sam still had his wounds from their fight with the wendigo-creature, and they were slowing him down substantially.

 

Dean jumped forward and cut the head clean off a demon that was about to attack Sam from the side, while his brother was occupied by the two attacking him from the front. Sam was slowing down, missing openings for attacks, and even Dean’s own body was tiring from the ceaseless fighting. Just as things were beginning to get truly desperate, however, all the demons suddenly froze to a standstill, before abandoning the fight and running helter-skelter in every which direction.  For a moment, sheer confusion paralysed Dean, until he heard the rustle and scratching of wings behind him. He barely had time to lunge at his brother and push him down, falling to the ground himself, both their faces pressed to the floor and eyes firmly closed even as Castiel released his true form above them and burned the demons from inside out.

 

“ _Cas! What’re you doing here?!_ ” demanded Dean, pulling himself back up to his feet as soon as the supernatural light had faded from the peripheries of his vision. “I thought you couldn’t enter this place,” he said, blinking, trying to readjust to the sudden darkness even as his eyes registered the hundreds of charred demon corpses lying all around them. He felt slightly staggered by the sheer number of bodies. It felt like standing on the sets of some particularly morbid movie. Somehow, Dean’s brain couldn’t bring itself to think of the charred lumps of flesh strewn all around as real human body parts.

 

“You were taking too long,” replied the Angel curtly, his voice strained and stance rigid. Dean noticed that his eyes looked even more glazed than before, and blood trickled down the side of his mouth.

 

But Castiel raised his hand towards them, and there was no more time to be lost. Dean grabbed Sam by the arm and rushed towards the Angel, his eyes closing as Castiel’s fingers once again touched his forehead.

 

When he opened them again a moment later, they were in their motel room, the floor wet with blood even as a barely conscious Angel swayed back and crumpled to the floor, his fall broken only by the brothers lunging forward and grabbing both ends of his trench coat in the nick of time. As Dean lowered the Angel gently to the ground, his hand came away sticky with blood. He looked up at Sam to see his brother similarly covered in crimson liquid as he cradled Castiel’s prone body in his arms.

 

“What happened to him Dean?” Sam asked, a hint of fear in his voice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do let me know what you think of the chapter and how you'd like to see the story progress. Suggestions are always welcome.


	11. Bedtime Stories

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys! Sorry for the late update. As you've probably realized by now, I have a terminal case of incurable laziness. Not to worry though, I'm nothing if not persistent. The chapters will keep coming, even if they're waaay over the deadline. :p

“You shouldn’t have made him fly all the way to Crowley’s lair in his condition, Dean,” Sam said severely as soon as the brothers had finished laying the comatose Angel out on the bed on Dean’s side of the room. They had initially tried renting an extra room for Castiel on their journeys, but seeing as the Angel never needed to sleep anyway, they’d soon reverted to the old model of renting a single room with twin beds for the brothers, while their companion spent the night listening to Angel radio or staring out the window at the stars above, when he wasn’t out fighting rebel Angels with Gabriel.

“Are you kidding me, Sammy?!” demanded Dean, clearly already annoyed with the upcoming lecture. “That sonovabitch Crowley had _kidnapped_ you! And after all that crap he had spewed about blood rituals and whatnot, who knew what he could’ve been doing to you while we sat around twiddling our thumbs, driving across the country. I couldn’t just sit back and do nothing!”

“But that’s exactly what you’d have had to do if you hadn’t had an Angel at your beck and call,” retorted Sam, unwilling to cede the point. “Which, need I remind you; we really _aren’t_ supposed to have in the first place!”

“But I did, didn’t I?” shot back his brother, with his usual mulishness when it came to such arguments. “That’s what matters! And why are you getting so worked up about this anyway? You’d have done the same if you’d been in my place. Don’t even try to deny it!”

And the thing was, Sam couldn’t. He knew that Dean was right. Had their situations been reversed, Sam really would have done exactly what Dean did; in fact, considering their history, perhaps something even more radical. But that didn’t change the fact that, apart from his concern for his friend _(and when exactly had Sam come to think of Cas as his friend, anyway?)_ , Sam was perhaps even more worried about said friend’s older brother. He did not look forward to seeing Gabriel’s reaction when he found out that they had landed his baby brother in what appeared to be some sort of an Angelic coma.

“What do you think’s wrong with him?” Sam asked, his voice tinged with genuine concern.

“I don’t know Sammy,” Dean sighed, pulling the covers over the Angel’s prone body with more gentleness than Sam would have expected, considering his brother’s attitude towards his accidental husband in the few weeks they’d been together. While Dean’s initial, knee-jerk hostility towards Cas had subsided somewhat over time, the Hunter still remained intrinsically wary of the Angel. “Cas had said something about Crowley’s haunt being warded against Angels. I’d told him to stay out while I went in to get you –”

“But he came after you anyway,” Sam finished for his brother.

“And a good thing he did, too,” Dean conceded with some reluctance. “We were totally in over our heads with those things, Sammy. I didn’t think we’d leave the place in one piece.”

“You think Crowley made those... _things_ ,” began Sam, swallowing uncomfortably at the reminder of the Demon King’s ominous words in that dank cellar. “With that kid’s blood, too? They sure as hell weren’t regular demons.”

“I don’t _know_ , man!” Dean repeated, frustration evident in his voice as he flopped down tiredly on the edge of Castiel’s bed. “Heaven, Hell, Angels, Demons...everything seems to be going to Hell in a hand-basket and it feels like there’s nothing we can do about it. Almost makes me wish for the good old days of ghost-hunting!”

“Yes well,” said Sam, fighting to suppress a yawn that threatened to overwhelm him. “I’m too tired to think right now. We’ll have to figure this out in the morning; call Bobby, maybe. I’m gonna go to bed for now. Holler if you need anything, yeah?”

And as Dean grunted some unintelligible reply, Sam let himself into the bathroom, inordinately grateful for the lukewarm shower that awaited him therein.

 

Drifting in and out of sleep on the uncomfortable chair beside Cas’ bed – or rather, _his_ bed that the Angel had commandeered for the night, on account of being an unconscious lump – Dean could vaguely make out the sounds of Sam’s gentle snoring on the other side of the room. After the events of the day, it was strangely comforting, a tangible proof of his brother’s presence and wellbeing.

Oddly, Dean found himself wishing he could hear Castiel breathe. A ridiculous thought, of course, considering that Angels didn’t need to breathe. But the Angel lying still as death on the narrow motel bed, his body unmoving and cold, made Dean feel strangely uncomfortable. He wanted to shake the man awake, hear him speak in that gravelly voice of his one more time, see his eyes light up with wonder like they did every time he saw a sparrow or a vending machine, or any other earthly object that caught his weird Angelic fancy.

Unbeknownst to his own drowsy consciousness, Dean felt for the first time a sense of vague, unsubstantiated fear at the thought of losing a companion he had never asked for in the first place. While it would probably solve many of his problems, Dean did not want Castiel to die. He didn’t want it with a ferocity that almost surprised his sleep-deprived mind. But the events of the day had taken their toll on the elder Winchester as well, and with his fingers carding absently through the unconscious Angel’s tousled hair, Dean finally drifted off into a deep, dreamless sleep.

 

The next morning saw Sam blinking through bleary eyes at a scene that made him wonder if he was still dreaming. Dean was curled up on an uncomfortable looking high-backed chair, drawn up next to Castiel’s bed, his fingers entangled in the sleeping Angel’s unruly hair as the pair of them slept contently in each other’s proximity, dead to the world.

Smirking, the younger Winchester snatched up his phone from the bedside table and quickly clicked about a dozen pictures of the idyllic scene before him. Much as he loved his brother, and to a lesser extent his brother’s Angelic husband, this was too good an opportunity for Sam to pass up. Blackmail material like this didn’t come his way every day, after all.

The faint clicking of the cell phone camera seemed to alert Dean, who stirred drowsily in his chair before jerking awake all at once, hunter training kicking in as he checked his surroundings for any potential threats. Quickly, Sam hid the phone as Dean settled down somewhat, belatedly realising the position he’d been sleeping in. Snatching his hand hastily away from Cas’ hair, he cleared his throat self-consciously.

“What’re _you_ staring at?!” he growled at Sam’s knowing smirk, a telltale blush colouring his disgruntled features. Sam quickly averted his eyes, pretending to be busy looking for his toothbrush and razor.

“Nothing,” he said quickly, his tone placating. “So, what’s the plan for today?”

“I’ll make plans after I’ve had my fill of morning caffeine,” Dean declared, letting lose a gigantic yawn. “Any requests for breakfast?” he asked, pulling on his favourite leather jacket.

“Doughnuts,” mumbled Sam, voice still thick with sleep, before letting himself into the washroom and locking the door behind him. Unlike his brother, Sam needed some mouthwash and a shower before he was ready to face the world on a new day.

By the time he’d finished his morning routine and re-entered their shared room, Dean was gone and Cas lay deathly still on the latter’s bed, just as he had been doing ever since they’d returned from that last hunt. Sam sighed. He wished he knew what was wrong with the Angel, and more importantly, how to fix it. Apart from the perfectly practical concern of wanting to avoid Gabriel’s wrath – which Sam had a feeling would _not_ be pretty – Sam was also oddly worried about his brother. Had he not woken before Dean this morning, he might never have suspected it, but the other hunter had most definitely developed an attachment – however fragile –  to their Angelic companion; whether he wanted to admit it to himself or not. And considering all the loss and heartbreak that the Winchesters (and Dean in particular) had endured over the years, Sam almost desperately wanted to spare his brother this latest blow.

Losing a friend was never easy in the best of circumstances, and Sam really didn’t want to think about how the bond might affect Dean, if they were to lose Cas now. Shaking his head to clear it of such pessimistic thoughts, Sam walked up to the chair still standing beside the Angel’s bed and arranged himself as comfortably as possible in his brother’s former position; keeping vigil.

 

As Dean walked back into their room, a tray of coffee and doughnuts balanced precariously on one hand as he perused his contacts with the other, he was greeted with the sight of his little brother sitting pensively over the comatose Angel still lying on his bed. The innocent scene sent an unexpected jolt of pain through his heart. It was ridiculous, and completely unwarranted, but he couldn’t help wondering what it would’ve been like if Cas had been bonded to Sam instead of him. The two seemed to get along like a house on fire when discussing nerdy topics, and Sam certainly seemed to understand the Angel better than he ever would.

Perhaps, if that had been the case, Cas would be fine right now. After all, none of this would have happened if Cas hadn’t injured his wing trying to save Dean from that hell-spawn, if he hadn’t let Crowley get away with Sam just to heal Dean’s injuries. Dean was reasonably sure Cas’ concern for him wasn’t born of anything other than a weird sense of duty towards his bonded partner. While Cas did seem to genuinely like Sam, Dean had never done anything to even remotely warrant the Angel’s affection or concern – quite the opposite to be honest.

Much as he didn’t particularly like the Angels, Dean was man enough to concede the unfairness of the situation – that Cas should be dying to save someone he had no reason to give a damn about.

 “Ahem,” began the elder Winchester, clearing his throat awkwardly to attract Sam’s attention as he walked further into the room, breakfast in hand. As he did, he stomped down brutally on his unruly emotions. As much as he hated to admit it, even to himself, Dean knew deep down that what he had been feeling in that moment was jealousy.

Which one of them he was jealous of, he wasn’t entirely sure. But he did know one thing for certain – that neither of the two had done anything to deserve it. Sam was his brother, his family, and had been nothing but completely loyal and supportive of him through this whole mess, and despite himself he couldn’t deny the fact that both he and Sam would probably be dead multiple times over by now had it not been for Castiel’s intervention. And if the troubled Angel found some measure of peace in Sam’s company, something that Dean knew he was incapable of providing, he had no right to begrudge them that small comfort. It wasn’t as if he had any legitimate claim upon Cas anyway, especially not after the way he had treated him since his arrival, almost killing him because of his own selfishness.

“Hey Sammy! Any news?” he asked airily, forcing a casual smile as he handed Sam his breakfast.

“He’s still unresponsive,” sighed Sam, gratefully accepting the food even as his brows furrowed with concern. “I hate to say it Dean, but maybe we should call Gabriel now.”

“Hold your horses there, man,” Dean said, holding up a hand to stall his brother. Gabriel was unpleasant company in the best of times. If it could possibly be helped, Dean would rather not find out what he was like when confronted with an unconscious brother. He’d never struck Dean as the forgiving type. “I say we call Bobby first. See if he knows anything about Angelic comas.”

“That’s an idea!” agreed Sam, secretly relieved. “Should I call, or will you?” he began, already reaching for his phone.

Before either brother could do anything further, however, the room filled with the sound of rustling feathers, and a gravelly voice murmured from the bed – “ _Hello Dean_ ”.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do let me know what you thought about this chapter in your comments below. Thank you. :)


	12. Reconciliation

Sam did not really understand much about what was going on, nor did he even really comprehend the cause of Cas’ miraculous recovery, but he couldn’t deny the fact that it was most certainly a change for the better. Cas had woken up confused and dizzy, barely able to lift himself off the bed; and Sam hadn’t seen Dean take care of anyone with this kind of dedication or patience since he himself had left for college.

And it wasn’t that Cas was an easy patient to care for. Not so much because he tried to be difficult, as Sam had sometimes tended to be during his more rebellious teen phase. On the contrary the Angel was almost heartbreakingly obedient – or at least Sam supposed it would’ve broken his heart if he weren’t too busy laughing himself to tears. No, it had much more to do with Castiel’s absolute inability to understand human technology, or to do anything without his Angel mojo. Speaking of which, his mojo seemed to have gone AWOL, with no return-date to boot.

Dean had drawn the line at teaching Cas how to unbutton his own pants, having stormed out of the room in a beet-red blur of leather, leaving Sam to attend to that unenviable task as he went to fetch them dinner. For the last week his brother had diligently fed the Angel soup, veggies and all things healthy, even as Sam could tell that it was killing Dean slowly on the inside. Cas, unlike before, seemed to have developed an appetite and gratefully consumed all that was offered, even shyly asking for a refill one memorable lunchtime.

Dean had, however, developed the weird habit of surreptitiously leaving the room whenever Sam and Cas got a little engrossed in talking about some particularly interesting lore. More often than not, he would come back more than a little tipsy, and for the life of him Sam couldn’t figure out what was going on with his brother. Asking straight-up for an explanation didn’t help any, and the more Sam pushed the more evasive Dean became, slipping away faster than a demon sprayed with holy water anytime the topic was remotely mentioned.

It was finally time to leave the motel. While Sam would have liked to stay a little longer, until Cas had had time to recover some more, Dean was right in that staying in one place for long might attract unwanted attention. They still weren’t sure what Crowley was up to, and whatever was up with the Angels was so beyond their pay-grade Sam wasn’t even inclined to hazard a guess. On the whole, it seemed wise to stay on the move, one step ahead of whatever might be trying to catch up. Gabriel had been a no-show for a while, which made Sam wonder if things might be heating up in paradise. He tried to make himself stop worrying about the Archangel. The dude was an _Archangel_ , for crying out loud. If anyone could take care of themselves, it was him. He didn’t need a puny mortal fretting stupidly about his safety. Honestly, it was all so painfully ridiculous!

With nowhere else to go, they had finally decided to head for Bobby’s. It was the closest thing to a home-base the Winchesters had.

“Drink” Dean ordered, throwing a bottle at Cas, who was sitting wrapped in blankets (courtesy Dean) on the back-seat of the recently recovered Impala. Cas caught the bottle easily, reflexes still superhuman, Angel mojo or no, and drank obediently. Sam cracked a secret smile. He wouldn’t dare say it out loud on pain of death, but he found the developing friendship between his two travelling companions profoundly adorable.

He didn’t know if it would ever develop into anything more, but seeing Dean gruffly but devotedly take care of the sick Angel, he couldn’t help thinking that this was probably what it would have been like if Dean ever really _had_ gotten married. He wasn’t the type to show affection openly, or even at all, most of the time. But Dean was capable of a love deeper and more enduring than most could ever hope to feel, when someone did manage to break down all his numerous barriers and get somewhere close to the core of the man. So far, the only ones to have had that privilege were Dean’s family, and perhaps Bobby, who was basically the Uncle they never had. To everyone else Dean Winchester was an impenetrable wall of superficial charm and obnoxious bluster. Well, everyone apart from Castiel, apparently, who seemed to have crashed through all of Dean’s defences without even noticing. Sam sighed. A more oblivious pair of idiots he had never known.

They stopped for dinner at a hole-in-the-wall café, and Dean piled pancakes onto Castiel’s plate, topping the impressive mound with a generous dose of maple syrup. Cas, for his part, looked at the gigantic meal with apprehensive eyes.

“But Dean–” he began in a small voice, clearly distressed.

“No buts, Cas,” Dean scolded severely, turning to glare at Sam when an inadvertent giggle escaped his tightly pressed lips. “You’re not gonna get any better if ya don’t eat well, y’know. Without your mojo, you need food to fuel your body, to help it heal. So eat up, buddy!” he said, taking a huge, satisfied bite of his own syrup-laden pancake.

“But Dean, I cannot possibly consume all of this food,” Cas pleaded, sparing Sam a pained glance the younger Winchester refused to acknowledge, busying himself with his own surprisingly tasty dinner. This was one domestic squabble he wasn’t wading into. “I don’t even really require sustenance of this nature–”

“Yes you bloody well do!” Dean snapped, apparently having had enough of his patient’s whining. “Now look here, Cas. I don’t care how much of a badass motherfucker you Angels think you are. Sam and I spent a whole night wondering if we’d have to bury you come morning, and then much of that morning preparing to be buried alive by Gabriel ourselves, so you’ll either eat your damn pancakes right friggin’ now or I’ll shove ‘em down your throat myself,” he finished, threateningly holding up a forkful of the meal in front of Castiel’s face.

What Dean had expected would be the result of that gesture, Sam didn’t know; but Sam could’ve seen it coming a mile off. With a bewildered look at the angry Hunter, Cas lowered his eyes, took one look at the offered pancake, dipped his head and swallowed the bite right off the fork in Dean’s outstretched hand. Sam didn’t know what right Dean had to look so surprised; it wasn’t as if the Angel’s lack of understanding of personal space was news to him. But his brother reddened so fast Sam wondered if a blood-vessel had burst somewhere in his face, burying himself in his own pancakes with what could only be described as a disgruntled squeak.

 

A rustle of wings in the empty garage made Dean stiffen up, imperceptibly tightening his hold over the car keys he’d just pulled out of his pocket. Sam’s fingers moved to his holster almost subconsciously.

“Brother,” breathed Castiel, as a dark-skinned man with hard, piercing eyes appeared out of nowhere next to the Impala. “What brings you here?”

“Hello Castiel,” said the stranger, offering a smile that put Dean instinctively on edge, his fingers slipping to the rifle in his back-pocket before he could even consciously assess the source of his discomfort. Years of John Winchester’s brutal training screamed at him to stay on his guard, the hair on the nape of his neck bristling with suppressed alarm. “I am here to take you with me.”

“Now wait a moment there, buddy!” Dean interjected, taking a step towards Castiel, physically shielding the smaller man with his body. What good that would do against an Angel he didn’t know, but every instinct he had was telling him he couldn’t let Cas go with this man, whoever he might be. Gabriel had said Cas would be safe with them, with him, and much as Dean hated that bastard he _had_ made a deal, and he had every intention of honouring his side of the bargain. “Cas ain’t going anywhere with you. Where’s that dickwad Gabriel anyway? He can come pick Cas up if it’s that important.”

“Dean,” Castiel began calmly, voice tinged with exasperation. “Brother Uriel is on our side. You have nothing to fear from him.”

“I ain’t fearin’ him or anyone else,” Dean snapped with more bravado than he actually felt, as a silver knife slipped from the Angel’s sleeve and into his hand. “Gabe said he was the only one who knew that you were with us, didn’t he? Well, I don’t see him here, do you? And if he’s not here, you’re not leaving with anyone else.”

“And how do you intend to stop me, Winchester?” Uriel growled, voice buzzing with barely restrained fury. “To think, a pathetic mud-monkey like you has the _audacity_ to seek to restrain a soldier of God! Brother Michael really has gone too far this time, allowing such an insolent creature to have custody of Castiel!”

“That’s enough, Brother,” Cas’ voice interrupted the tirade, an undercurrent of power making the words echo in the confined space of the garage. “What are you doing here? And where is Gabriel?”

“He’s injured,” said Uriel, slipping the knife back wherever it had come from. “The enemy has doubled its efforts in the last few days. As you know we lost Sachiel soon after you left Heaven, and many others have followed. Brother Gabriel was ambushed by the enemy while following a lead on Sachiel’s murder.”

“What?!” Castiel exclaimed, his voice filled with something Dean had never thought he would hear in the Angel’s words. Cas had been perfectly calm, even while having his wing torn apart by the crazed wendigo or evaporating the rabid demons with his true form in a chamber warded against Angels; but Dean could swear that for the first time since they had known him, Castiel was afraid. A few weeks ago Dean would not have been able to sense it, but the signs seemed apparent now in the subtle tensing of the Angel’s shoulder, in the minute clenching of his jaw as his fingers closed around thin air, itching to fight an enemy that wasn’t there. Cas had thought nothing of embracing almost certain death by waltzing into the warded cave with a wing half torn apart by demonic claws, but the thought of losing Gabriel had him visibly terrified. If he ever saw him again, Dean promised himself he would at least _try_ to be nicer to the other Angel. Clearly he meant a lot to Cas, and after all the guy had done for _his_ family, it was the least he could do in return.

“Where is he now?” asked Castiel finally, a slight waver in his voice.

“Near the village of Findlay in Illinois. He had tracked the traitor to a church near the village. Apparently the church is being used as a sort of portal to create an opening into Brother Lucifer’s Cage, the blood of Angels used as sacrifice to feed and nourish the dimensional chasm.”

“Alright,” said Sam, speaking up for the first time since the newcomer had arrived. “But I don’t understand how Cas going there would be of any use. Isn’t that what the other side would want?”

“The village in question,” began Uriel, his voice heavy. “Is being guarded by demons– ”

“Demons!” repeated Castiel, genuine shock colouring his voice. “How could our brothers have fallen this far?! To enlist the help of demons to attack one of their own!”

A muscle twitched in Uriel’s jaw, and he appeared to be about to say something before stopping himself at the last moment to continue with his story. “These are not ordinary demons. They are...enhanced, nearly mindless and significantly stronger than normal demons. It appears Hell has been breeding this ‘special’ kind of demons for some time now, under Lucifer’s orders I daresay; attack dogs basically, meant to annihilate anything in their path. Our forces have been holding them off as best they can, but our numbers are dwindling. We need your help, Castiel. Brother Gabriel must not be allowed to fall into demonic hands.”

“I will go with you,” said Castiel, a ring of finality in his tone, as with one last look at Dean he stepped towards his waiting comrade. “We will take Gabriel back to Heaven, or die trying.”


	13. Confrontations

 

A rustle of wings, a flash of brilliant light and an Angel blade flew past Castiel, missing Uriel by the fraction of an inch. The latter spun around, his own blade clutched tightly in his hand, ready for a fight. Castiel mimicked the motion, only to see both the Winchesters reaching for their guns.

“Hello there, li’l bros!” greeted Gabriel cheerfully from the other end of the garage, casually raising his hand to catch the blade flying back towards its owner. “Hello Winchesters,” he added, as if in an after-thought, pocketing the knife.

“Brother!” exclaimed Cas, rushing to the archangel and enveloping the latter in a thoroughly uncharacteristic hug. “You’re alright.”

“Well, looks like the humans have been teaching you some useful things after all, huh?” laughed Gabriel, returning the embrace momentarily before stepping back. “Hello there, Uriel. Aren’t you happy to see me?”

“Impossible,” muttered the other Angel, automatically tightening his grip on the blade even as he took an almost involuntary step back. “How can you be here?”

“Oh come on!” said Gabriel, pouting. “Did you really think that those puny little demons you sent after me would actually be able to hold me for long? I _am_ an effing Archangel, y’know! Why does everyone keep forgetting that?!” he moaned, sighing dramatically. “Not to say that that was shoddy work, though. Demons born of the blood of humans themselves mutated by demon-blood? Gotta admit. That’s a neat idea! Not yours, of course,” he continued, scoffing at Uriel. “Only dear Lucy would come up with something as awesome as that!” he declared happily.

“What’re you fucking Angels yapping on about?” demanded Dean, interrupting the argument. “We thought you were supposed to be dyin’ in some church right now,” he said, looking Gabriel up and down like he expected the Angel to drop dead any moment now. “What’re you doing here?”

“Honestly Deano, your undying faith in my powers breaks my heart. So, which one do you want first? The good news or the bad news?”

“Gabriel,” Sam began, finally stepping forward, inspecting the newcomer with something akin to relief in his eyes. “What’s going on? Seriously dude, you had us really worried for a moment there.”

Gabriel smiled, his expression for once neither sardonic nor glib. “There’ve been some...unexpected developments in the grand drama of divine warfare, Sammy,” he began theatrically, ducking his head apologetically as Sam’s brows furrowed in an unimpressed frown. “I _am_ sorry for worrying you though.”

“But Brother,” interrupted Castiel, tilting his head in confusion. “What happened to you?”

“Nothing I couldn’t handle with a little divine wrath,” said Gabriel flippantly. “The good news, Cas, is that I’m alive and kicking. And so are most of our brothers and sisters, no thanks to little bro Uriel here,” he said, rounding suddenly on the latter. “The bad news,” he continued, voice lowered dangerously, “Is that it appears there is a traitor in our midst.”

“What?!” asked Castiel, gazing wide-eyed at the two Angels, even as Dean raised his gun, pointing it straight at Uriel’s head.

“Yep. Thought so.”

 

Blinding light issued momentarily from the dusty windows of the garage, the display brief enough to be dismissed as a mere illusion by any passers-by who might inadvertently have witnessed it. Then, all was calm once more.

Uriel’s vessel lay haphazardly on the dirty garage floor, a silver knife sticking out of his chest, his face contorted in an expression of surprise and horror as the last vestiges of Angelic grace left the prone form. Giant impressions of Angelic wings decorated the dusty ground. Two neat bullet holes dotted his forehead, as smoke still issued from the Winchesters’ respective firearms.

“Not bad, boys” quipped Gabriel, smirking conspiratorially at the brothers, before pulling his own blade casually out of the fallen Angel’s breast.

“Wanna tell us what’s going on now?” demanded Dean irritably, holstering his gun with practiced nonchalance. “Where was that bastard trying to lure Cas? Wasn’t he supposed to be one of yours?”

“He was,” Gabriel sighed, a shadow passing over his features. “He had been stationed on Earth, along with many of our other brothers and sisters, to monitor and counter rebel activity in and around human settlements. Apparently he had been turned by our enemies while on Earth; by Lucifer’s forces,” he said, flicking a worried gaze over at Cas, who was looking both shocked and confused by the new development. “Apparently, he planned to lure Cas to Findlay, where he and his comrades had made preparations to sacrifice him at that altar of Lucifer, freeing the Devil himself to rain havoc on Earth.”

“Well,” began Castiel, leaning tiredly against one of the numerous pillars in the garage. “Maybe you should have let him, Brother.”

“ _Cas!_ ” growled Dean, moving instinctively closer to the seraph, though he stopped just short of touching the Angel. Gabriel’s eyes widened in disbelief and what might have been the remaining vestiges of forgotten anger, directed not at Cas, but at the slain foe lying dead at their feet.

“Well, how many more will have to die in my name before we can finally resolve this meaningless war, Gabriel?!” Cas demanded, rounding angrily on the Archangel, his voice distraught. “Uriel used to be my comrade, my _friend_. Is any of this even worth it, all so that I could keep living a little longer? Why, when I could end all of it, all the bloodshed and the killings, by flying to this church he spoke of right now? End all of it once and for all!”

“Cas, please,” Sam began, laying a comforting hand on his friend’s shoulder, just as Gabriel raised a hand to silence him.

“Shamsiel, Haniel, Remiel, Pahallah,” Gabriel began, narrating the names in a distant, almost indifferent tone of voice. “Sachiel,” he continued, sparing a glance at Castiel just in time to watch him draw in a sharp breath at the abrupt reminder of their recently deceased sister. “All dead. All killed; betrayed and _murdered_ , by one of our own. One whom they had trusted, and would have defended with their own lives on the battlefield,” he looked down, eyes alight with helpless rage and sorrow, at Uriel’s lifeless vessel. “Uriel. Do you still believe that he had deserved to live, brother?”

“How?” Castiel asked simply, refusing to put into words the betrayal that was reflected clearly in his eyes.

Gabriel sighed. “Lucifer and his minions,” he began, leaning casually against the garage wall, his gaze fixed unflinchingly upon his younger brother. “Have started conspiring with demons to achieve their goals. Uriel wasn’t lying to you about that. They have found a way to...enhance the abilities of the demons that Hell creates –”

“With tainted human blood, like that wendigo we fought the other day!” Sam piped up excitedly, his eyes wide.

“Quite,” Gabriel agreed, sparing a quick glance at the younger Winchester, something akin to concern in his eyes. “It appears that they are trying to raise an army.”

“A demonic horde,” Castiel murmured, voice strained.

“With Angels to lead them,” Gabriel continued, nodding grimly. “Uriel – and there are others like him, I daresay – was attempting to recruit generals for this army, from among our ranks.”

“And he offed the ones who refused the offer, did he?” Dean finished, giving voice to the thought that had plagued all their minds since the conversation began.

“Yes.” Gabriel answered simply.

 

A change had come over Castiel ever since the three of them had left the garage in the Impala, Dean firmly refusing Gabriel’s offer to teleport them back to their motel with his Angel mojo. The younger Angel seemed...more, somehow. Sam did not know how exactly to put that feeling into words, but Castiel appeared to be more focused now, more alert and vigilant. More like the soldier they had always known him to be, Sam realised. Only they had never really _felt_ it, in all the time he was with them. For all his power and competence in a fight, Cas had always had the bearing of a confused baby bird awestruck by the world around it.

Now though, Sam thought, sneaking a surreptitious glance at his friend on the rear-view mirror, he thought he could see what Gabriel had really meant when he said that the Angels were the soldiers of Heaven. Every line of Cas’ body was taut with barely suppressed tension, his face set in a mask of grim determination. Sam itched to be able to talk to Cas, to ask him what he was thinking, but the grim, mulish expression on his brother’s face as he drove the Impala to their destination way over the speed limit held him back. Sam could feel the impending confrontation in his bones, in every molecule of the stale, congested air inside the car, and he couldn’t say he was looking forward to it.

 

“This needs to end,” Castiel pronounced, once they had finally entered their damp little motel room once again and locked the door behind them. “And even though I was not the one to start this war, I must be the one to end it.”

“Are you fucking _insane_?” Dean snarled, rounding on his husband, and Sam almost breathed a sigh of relief as the tension building up between the two over the past several hours, over silent glances and unspoken words, finally broke. “This is the fucking _Devil_ we are talking about! Fucking Lucifer! Heaven and Hell, God and Satan...duking it out on the dustbowl for kicks. This stuff is so far above our pay grade it ain’t even funny. We walk into that shit, ain’t none of us coming back out in one piece from inside the ring.”

“ _We_ ,” began Castiel, voice tight with barely restrained anger. “Will not do anything. This is _my_ war, and _I_ will be the only one to fight it. Enough lives have been lost in my name. I will _not_ have your blood on my conscience, Dean Winchester. I have enough of it already to last me several lifetimes.”

“Cas,” Sam pleaded, trying to reason with the distraught Angel, only to be drowned out by his brother’s answering growl.

“Well, if that’s the way you feel, there’s no point in having this conversation at all, is there? Our problems are our own, and yours are yours. Isn’t that right? Why would an Angel care if us puny humans were being slaughtered by demonic hordes rampaging the Earth?”

“Dean –” Cas sighed, taking a step towards the elder Winchester, but the latter jerked back out of the Angel’s reach. Anger and hurt fought for dominance in the conflicted hazel eyes, before Dean grabbed his jacket and stormed out of the room, banging the old, creaky door behind him.


End file.
